


Damaged Defenders Guide

by Sherza



Series: Damaged Defenders [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Hulk (2003), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008), Thor (Movies), X-Men (Movies)
Genre: CANNOT EMPHASISE SPOILERS ENOUGH, Cartoon Canon, FAQ, Headcanon, Other, Spoilers, TV Show Canon, Timeline, comics canon, movie canon, seriously spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-27 01:18:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 40
Words: 31,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5028121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherza/pseuds/Sherza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Herein lies: A timeline for in-fic events. Canon (generally a mix of comics/cartoon/movie and head) for main characters. Blurbs about frequently seen secondary characters. Blurbs about the Realms and their residents. An FAQ. Spoilers and hints of spoilers as to future events (but not many of those)</p><p>THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD. Read at your own discretion. Chapters with spoilers will be labeled with SPOILERS in the title.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In-Fic Timeline

**Author's Note:**

> OK, people.
> 
> Damaged Defenders is now over 200k, and is nowhere NEAR finished. You, my readers, have been FANTASTIC since I started that story. Given how big, involved, plot-heavy and just generally confusing Damaged Defenders can and definitely WILL be, I've decided to post a guide. There will be all sorts of stuff in here. Timelines, canons (head and otherwise) for lots of people, info on the Realms, on potential future character appearances, and whatever else you guys want to ask about.
> 
> All that said ... SPOILERS AHOY. Chapters with spoilers WILL be labeled, so that if you don't want to read spoilers you don't have to.
> 
> If you have questions? Ask away. I wouldn't even have considered posting this if I wasn't interested in telling you guys stuff. No question is too nitty-gritty or nosy.

Timeline Of In-Fic Events

For convenience's sake, events will be broken up into 30-day 'months'.

Month 1

Day_____Chapter(s)_________Events  
1_______1 – 12, 14__________Chitauri invasion, Darcy and Jane moved to Tromso, Betty rescued  
2_______12 – 16, 21, 50______Darcy, Jane, Betty at Tower, Odin gets bitched out, Fury, Ross antics, Soldier and Yelena at NYC, Coulson POV  
3_______16 – 18, 20_________Team on Asgard, Avengers quarters shown, Bruce/Betty reunion, Logan recovers a memory  
4_______19 – 23____________Tony, Steve, Loki in lab, Thor gets advice, X-Men go home, Clint in range, Natasha training Darcy  
5_______24 – 26, 31_________Incident at Mansion and fallout, Natasha apologizes to Tony for IM2  
6_______27 – 31____________Loki has nightmare/flashback, Ross and WSC tring to cause trouble and fallout  
7_______32 – 33, 35_________Shopping trip, Sif vs Daufin  
8_______34 – 38, 40_________Tony, Loki in lab, Commando kids, Bruce Presidential pardon, Odin fuckery, Svartalfheim arrival  
9_______39, 40, 45, 46________Folks try their Tony-made goodies, Charles warns of next invasion, Frigga and co arrive at Jotunheim  
10______41, 42______________Steve talks training, gang watches LotR  
11______43, 44, 47___________Tyr tells gang about coup, Cecelia interviewed, Farbauti finds out about Loki  
12______48, 49______________Farbauti/Loki meetup and fallout  
14______51 – 55_____________Soldier and Yelena capture, reveal, and fallout  
15______56 – 68_____________Soldier fallout, Sif grows up a bit, Peter Parker intro, Loki debunks Eddas, tormented by Thanos  
17______69, 70______________Sam Wilson hired, Soldier fallout, new arm for Soldier designed  
18______71_________________Gang arrives on Asgard, Tony builds arm, Soldier operated on  
19______75, 77______________Soldier POV on pre-surgery events, Yelena escapes  
20______72 – 74_____________Playing with Hulk on Asgard, Sam POV on days 17 – 20  
21______76, 92______________Info on Realms given, Charles meets Roberto da Costa  
22______75_________________Soldier wakes post-surgery/starts to remember  
23______77, 80______________Most of Avengers return, reveal of HYDRA, Soldier insists on inclusion in Realm tour  
24______78 – 80_____________Peter visits Tower, Asgardian assholes taunt Loki, Tony  
25______81 – 84_____________Svartalfheim trip, Darcy geek wrangling, Natasha prepping for mission  
26______85, 87 – 89__________Natasha's anti-HYDRA mission, Nidavellir trip  
27______86, 92 – 95__________Aunt May finds out about Peter's powers, mutant teams check in, Alfheim trip  
28______90, 91, 96___________Peter and Aunt May at Tower, Vanaheim trip  
29______97, 98______________Jotunheim trip and return to Earth  
30______99 – 108____________Steve told about Hydra, Attack on Von Strucker castle and fallout/HYDRA response and X-23 reveal

Month 2  
Day_____Chapter(s)__________Events  
1________109 – 111___________Peter and Tony in lab, Aunt May cooks, gets Steve to talk, HYDRA survivors and Yelena arrive at Zemo base  
2________111, 121____________X-23 and Yelena fight, Zemo and Yelena plot, Gamora and Peter Quill reveal  
3________112, 113____________Alpha Flight meet and greet, Teambuilding with Hulk  
4________114________________Dwarves arrive on Earth  
5________115 – 118, 120_______Dwarves explore the Tower/hydroponics, Steve and Loki chat with Magneto  
6________119, 122, 123________Meeting with sub/astronaut crews, Darcy and Loki in Tony's lab  
7________124 – 126___________Arrival of Vanaheim fleet, press conference, and fallout  
8________127________________Rogue introspection, team preps for HYDRA raid  
9________128 – 131___________HYDRA raid and Clint introspection, Osborn reveal, Zemo plans  
10_______132 – 137___________Avengers at X-Men for practice, Vanir meet X-Men


	2. Pre-Fic Timeline

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick sketch of basic events prior to the start of the fic. I may add more to this later.

Pre-Fic Timeline

902 - Thor born

1115 - Loki born

1855 - Logan born

1920 - Howard Stark born

1922 - Steve Rogers born

1935 - Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr born

1942 - Project Rebirth (sometime before summer)

1944 - Steve goes down in the ice (Somewhere between January and March)  
1944 - Erik Lensherr brought to concentration camp, manifests his powers, is discovered, then experimented on briefly before escaping sometime before winter

1945 - Natasha Romanov born, WW2 ends

1946 - Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr meet and become friends

1952 - Logan captured by Weapon X and experimented on

1962 - Nick Fury born

1967 - Phil Coulson born

1972 - Tony Stark born  
1972 - Natasha Romanov escapes Red Room's control

1976 - Warren Worthington III born

1977 - Pepper Potts, James Rhodes, Hank McCoy, and Bruce Banner born

1982 - Clint Barton born

1984 - Jean Grey born

1985 - Jane Foster and Ororo Munroe born

1987 - Scott Summers born

1988 - Darcy Lewis, Remy LeBeau, and Kurt Wagner born

1996 - Logan escapes Weapon X's control  
1996 - John Allerdyce, Bobby Drake and Rogue born

2000 - Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr part ways

June 2003 - Creation of Hulk

March 2011 - Iron Man 1  
May 2011 - Culver and Harlem incidents, Thor exiled, Iron Man 2  
October 2011 - Liberty Island incident

February 2012 - Steve found  
March 2012 - Peter bitten  
May 2012 - Avengers movie / fic starts


	3. Character Bio: Tony Stark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you would like clarification or have questions, ask away!

Character Bio: Tony Stark

Age: 40

DD's Tony is movie canon compliant up to the start of the fight between Tony, Thor, and Cap in Avengers, and everything happens at the MCU canon times.

Now let's get into headcanons.

First, Howard Stark? Was a shit father and husband. He really should never have married or procreated at all. He felt it was required of him, however, thanks to the mores of the time he was born in and the world's expectation that he would have an heir to whom his business would go when he died. This is not the best mind frame to have, going into a marriage and parenthood. To make matters worse, Howard had started to climb into a bottle at the end of World War Two, thanks in large part to his role in helping to create the bombs dropped on Japan. By the time Tony was born, Howard was a full-fledged high-functioning alcoholic.

Howard was, at best, neglectful and absent as both husband and father. Much of the time he was verbally abusive in a variety of ways. At worst, at the height of a few of his drunken rages, he got physically violent. This, thankfully, was very rare and only once was focused on Tony. Tony being Tony, even as a teenager wasn't going to tolerate that crap and hit back. Howard never tried it again.

As for Maria, she was trapped. She had neither the money nor the influence that Howard did. Any attempt to bring Howard's behavior to light would have been bought off or simply disbelieved. Any attempt to leave him would have left her destitute … and would not have gotten Tony out of the situation. As his heir, Howard would have kept sole custody of Tony. So Maria stayed, and did what she could to mitigate the damage Howard was doing. There's a reason the Maria Stark Foundation exists.

It certainly didn't help the situation that Tony was far more intelligent than Howard, for all his brilliance, ever dreamed of being. Worse, even as a toddler, Tony had an instinctive, intuitive grasp of technology and its capabilities. The like of which has not been seen before or since. His designs and creations are at least twenty years ahead of what the rest of the tech industry creates. In the case of Dummy, who was built while Howard was still alive, he was a good fifty years ahead. Howard … did not deal well with being so thoroughly eclipsed.

Abuse, regardless of type, leaves scars. It was just Tony's bad luck that the type Howard perpetrated never left a visible mark. Tony, thankfully, was the defiant survivor type. While damage was still done, Tony managed to keep it together and even limit the amount of damage that got done. While he has (well hidden) self-confidence issues, frankly, it's astounding that his only real trigger is 'Captain America'.

Secondly, Tony's personality and behavior is ... not as bad as people think it is, nor as bad as the files and news bytes on him (quoted in a couple places in canon) make him sound.

See, Tony figured out young that he was going to spend his entire life in a fishbowl. He also figured out that the paparazzi were merciless. That if a public figure didn't do something newsworthy, the paps would make shit up. They'd camp out at his home and take pictures with telephoto lenses etc.

If he was ever going to have anything even remotely resembling privacy, he was going to have to play the paps' game. It would have the side benefit of making business rivals underestimate him, and, while he was alive, gave Howard apoplexy. So he partied. He drank, he fucked everything female he could get his hands on. Or, at least, that's the way it looked.

In reality Tony got really good at sleight of hand and the whole 'pay no mind to the man behind the curtain' schtick. He did drink, but less than half of what people thought he did. His known bed partners were, despite all appearances, carefully chosen. Meaning he picked women who would happily blab to every tabloid on the planet (or write the story themselves, in the case of Everhart), because that would give the paps something to talk about for weeks/months and they wouldn't go digging for news. 

Doing that allowed him to have something approaching a private life. Meaning he got to, if he was careful, do important things and date people he actually wanted a relationship with without the paps noticing. If they did notice, they usually dismissed it as yet more Tony Stark shenaniganry.

And really, if anyone had been paying attention AT ALL, they would have realized there was something hinky going on. Because at the very least, a guy who parties several times every week, gets blackout drunk at damn near every party, and spends days in bed with various women wouldn't have the time to invent even a tenth of the crap Tony invented in his twenties and thirties.

So yeah. Tony's not as bad as he seems to be. That said, yes he is obnoxious and has an overly healthy ego at least as regards his intelligence and ability with tech. He is prone to talking insanely fast and/or over other people. He's prone to making rather capricious decisions and changing subjects at the drop of a hat. 

He does drink, though he's not truly alcoholic. He saw what that shit did to Howard, so he keeps the drinking actual alcohol down to a glass or two a day at most. Anything more than that (only seen in public) and he was actually drinking something not alcoholic, or holding an alcoholic drink but not consuming it. He did get around pre-Pepper, though not quite to the level the news would have you believe. He is absolutely *not dealing* with the horrific case of PTSD he's got going on thanks to Afghanistan, Stane and Vanko ... yeah. Nope. Not dealing.

He is viciously, mercilessly protective of those few people he genuinely trusts and cares about. Seriously. The entire reason he managed to survive having the arc reactor yanked out by Stane was because Stane threatened Pepper, and Tony was NOT HAVING that shit.

He has a tendency to charge in all guns blazing, with no real thought to tactics or a plan. That said, he has a unique ability to come up with viable plans on the fly, so he can afford to rush in without prior planning. It's a habit and ability that will probably drive Steve to drink, however, as it makes developing and keeping to a plan of action with a team tricky. He is incredibly insecure (though he hides it really damn well) about his own worth outside of the stuff he can and does invent. He's really bad at saying what he's feeling, and tends to default to buying things to express his affection for people, or to apologize for a screwup, or whatever.

Tony is absolutely terrified of becoming a father. To the point that he got a vasectomy in his very early twenties. He didn't want to end up being a shit father ala Howard, and he was self-aware enough to know the odds were pretty stacked against him. SI will be split up among the board members when he dies.


	4. Character Bio: Steve Rogers

Character Bio: Steve Rogers

Age: 22

DD's Steve, other than age, is MCU canon compliant up to the fight between Tony, Thor, and Steve in the Avengers movie.

Now for the headcanons.

Let's start with his age. Why do I have him so young?

Quite simply? Because people matured a lot earlier in his era. Between the Depression and World War 2, folks didn't much have a choice. Steve's mom died before he came of age, which meant he was basically on his own, Bucky notwithstanding, for at least a year. He led men in war. So he comes off a whole lot more mature than we generally associate with young men that age in the modern era.

Second thing. Let's talk about the Serum and what it did.

It juiced Steve up to the peak of human performance. All too often, this is interpreted as ONLY physical enhancements. To which I say BULLSHIT. His mind got upgraded along with his muscles, people. This means that DD's Steve is actually genius level intelligent. He just doesn't realize it yet because it's all still very new. It has, after all, only a year or so since he got the Serum, to his perception. The SSR never bothered to test his intelligence before and after the Serum, and he certainly hasn't had the time or opportunity to have his IQ tested in the modern era. He knows he's smarter/more perceptive, but he doesn't know how far it goes.

This is, in point of fact, why he's so good at tactics and strategy. He wasn't at all stupid pre-serum, and had at least a rudimentary grasp of strategy and tactics thanks to his bully-baiting habits. His understanding and capability with both took an exponential leap forward thanks to the Serum, aided and abetted by what training he received in boot camp.

In point of fact, if you need any further evidence as to his intelligence and ability to lead, you need look no further than the Commandos, and Steve's actions during that time. See, Steve only ever had boot camp as training. And as anyone in the military can tell you, boot camp in and of itself does not make you ready to lead any size unit during combat. Yet the Commandos happened.

To make that clear – during World War Two, blacks and whites DID NOT serve in the same units together, in the US military. The Nisei, that is, second-gen Japanese Americans, also had their own segregated units. Women did not serve on the front lines period. While the various folks that became the Commandos might have been willing to follow Steve in thanks for his saving their lives, as trained, experienced soldiers (all of whom far outranked Steve when he started), they would not have remained with him if he was a bad leader.

Yet the Commandos stayed with Steve and followed him gladly. More to the point, the Commandos had at least one black man, a Nisei, and frequently, Peggy behind enemy lines kicking HYDRA ass together under Steve's command. This is entirely down to Steve's complete blindness to and refusal to perpetuate bigotry and prejudice, as well as a hefty dose of charisma and charm that helped to ease tensions. The Commandos' many successful actions against HYDRA were due to Steve's ability to make the most of and coordinate his peoples' abilities.

Third thing. Steve. Is. Not. Naive. See also: Grew up in the Depression and fought in World War 2. Nobody is naive after THAT.

Fourth thing: Steve is neither innocent nor totally virginal. Because there is just no way in hell that one or more of the following didn't happen.

1) A chorus girl climbing him like a tree  
2) A fan climbing him like a tree after a USO show.  
3) The Commandos dragging him into a whorehouse or otherwise getting a gal to try him on for size  
4) He got more than the one kiss from Peggy somewhere along the way, we just didn't see it in the movie

That said, I don't think he's had full-on penetrative sex with anyone yet. He is too much the gentleman to have done that. Not to mention that he had a hell of a crush/was head over heels in love with Peggy. 

Fifth thing: Steve swears. He knows lots of swears in lots of languages - see also: soldier in World War 2. In a multilingual unit. He doesn't swear much – he thinks it's crass – but he does know the words and he will use them if he feels the situation calls for it.

Last but by no means least, Steve is not the hilariously erroneous and overblown Captain America when it comes to personality and beliefs.

Steve is as stubborn as a Missouri mule. Stubborner, even. He has, much to the shock of virtually everyone in the modern era, quite the temper. Most folks have forgotten his Irish roots. While Steve by no means has a temper that explosive or uncontrolled, he's far more volatile than Captain America is usually portrayed. He has little to no regard for his own health and safety. This long predates his becoming Cap. He did not hesitate to punch a boy/man twice his size in the face, even when he was ninety pounds soaking wet. 

He also has a rock-solid core of unshakable beliefs and morals that I honestly don't think even a Glowstick-style mindwhammy would shift. He has zero tolerance for bigotry and prejudice of any kind – he considers them bullying, which he is rather famous for disliking. While he is currently having a bit of a crisis of faith due to the trauma of his ice-nap, he was, and is still at heart, a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic. He firmly believes in the Catholic tenets. He is earnest, generally honest (except where card-playing is concerned, then beware that wide-eyed innocent look), a true gentleman, and charismatic and charming as hell.

He also has one of the top-three worst cases of PTSD in the Avengers. Because even Serum-enhanced, there's only so much a person can deal with, and Steve is about topped out at the moment. Thanks to the Serum he'll bounce back faster than a normal person possibly could, but in the meantime, he's a complete wreck.

Fortunately, most if not all of the Avengers and their support personnel are very aware that Steve is verging on being a basket case and are doing everything they can to support him. Ironically enough, just being leader of the Avengers and facing the problem they are is helping. It's … familiar, to Steve. The whole leading a unit of wildly disparate personalities to defeat a monstrous evil thing. That familiarity is something he badly needs at present. And while what Bucky went through is not making things better, having even a damaged and mostly silent version of his lifelong friend at his back is also helping immensely.


	5. Character Bio: Thor

Character Bio: Thor

Age: Thor is just under 1100 years old, and the equivalent of 21 Earth years of age.

DD's Thor is MCU canon compliant up to the fight between Tony, Thor, and Steve in the Avengers movie.

Now for the headcanons.

First: Forget pretty much everything from Norse lore. It's either completely wrong or so blown out of proportion as to be laughable.

Why?

Two reasons

1) MCU Thor doing to MCU Loki (aka his little brother) the shit Norse God Thor did to Norse God Loki? Would make MCU Thor a horrifying monster.

2) If the shit that happened to Loki and Loki's kids (especially the kids, Jesus Fucking Christ) in the Eddas were for real? The Avengers would BURN ASGARD TO THE GROUND. Seriously, just ... yeah.

Ok, now. Why do I have Thor as right at 'fully adult' age in Asgardian terms? That's easy.

The aborted coronation. Odin calling Thor and Loki 'boys'. And, honestly, the way Thor acts prior to his wakeup call. He acts like a teenager/early twenties young man. So I think the coronation thing was happening *because* Thor was just legally of age to take the throne while Odin slept, rather than Frigga doing it. And Asgard being the bastion of patriarchy it is, a spoiled rotten, tantrum-throwing blood knight was better than a woman on the throne.

Odin is a bastard. Know this. Accept this. He didn't start out that way, but at some point after he got crowned King, he went off the rails big time. Thor was spoiled rotten, indulged and praised at every turn for anything and everything. He could, quite literally, do no wrong in Odin's eyes. Little wonder then, that Thor turned out the way he did.

Thank everything ever that DD's Thor inherited the bulk of his mother's personality and temperament. Yeah, he was spoiled and had a really, really bad tendency to throw tantrums and just generally not think about the consequences of his actions, but he wasn't an unredeemable mess like Odin.

Thor, despite Odin's idiocy, was a pretty damn good brother to Loki. He and Frigga were the only ones to stand up for Loki with any regularity. Thor got into a whole hell of a lot of fights as a little boy defending Loki. He thought Loki was weird as hell and was uncomfortable with Loki's ease with magic, but that did not change the fact that Loki was his brother. Nobody got away with making Loki miserable save Odin. And even Odin got growled at a time or three once Thor was old enough and strong enough to stand against him.

It was in large part thanks to Loki that Sif in particular (and the Warriors Three) came to be a friend of Thor's. Each was an oddball in their own way, and largely ostracized in the larger Asgardian community. Thor, long used to Loki's oddities, thought nothing of hanging about with other folks who were odd in one way or another.

Being depowered and thrown out of Asgard for what was, to Thor, just another day's adventure was a hell of a shock. It succeeded in at least partially tearing Thor's privilege blinders away. Loki's presumed death was an even greater shock. The things he heard about what had happened in Asgard during his absence … well, that was just plain confusing. Between the three, Thor did the one thing Odin really didn't want him to do.

Thor started to think. To look at things critically and assess them for the first time in his life, rather than leaping in where angels feared to tread with neither thought nor care to the consequences. And in the months that followed his return to Asgard, Thor began to change – for the better.

Thor has a heart damn near as big as his body. He's gallant and chivalrous and caring. He's remarkably unprejudiced considering what he grew up with. He does still have prejudices, but he's a thousand percent better than most Asgardians. Because most Asgardians wouldn't (and didn't) tolerate Sif or Loki. He is a steadfast friend and an implacable enemy.

He's also smarter than people realize. He's not a genius by any measure, but he's a lot closer to it than he's generally credited with. Part of it is that he comes across as an enormous golden labrador. Big, lovable as hell, energetic, and slightly goofy. Especially on Earth, that sort of thing is associated with jocks who don't tend to have much in the way of brains. His unfamiliarity with Earth really doesn't help. Having Loki around doesn't help either. Because Loki is the same sort of scary-smart (in Asgardian terms, which are higher than Earth's) that Tony and Bruce are and next to him pretty much everyone looks like a dunce.

Thor does not do *anything* by halves. If he loves, he loves with all he is. He trusts wholly and is totally loyal. Likewise, he hates with extreme virulence, has towering rages that scare the pants off anyone with sense, and will hold a grudge until the end of existence itself.

Thanos does not even know what he's let himself in for, just from Thor. Because Thor is *going* to 'have words' with Thanos about what he did to Loki. Where 'have words' means 'beat the ever loving hell out of'.


	6. Character Bio: Loki

Character Bio: Loki

Age: Loki is just over 900 years old, and the equivalent of 19 Earth years of age by Asgardian standards. By Jotun standards, he's closer to 30.

DD's Loki is MCU canon compliant (save his age) up to the fight between Thor, Tony, and Steve in the Avengers movie.

Now for the headcanons.

Again, forget pretty much everything from Norse lore. It's either completely wrong or so blown out of proportion as to be laughable.

Odin is a bastard. You need to know and accept this. Because ... yeah. The SHIT he put this boy through. For serious.

Whatever Odin's reasons for kidnapping Loki – which is, let's face it, what he did – what actually happened to Loki in Asgard was just shy of straight up horrific.

Loki is, in point of fact, an entirely different species than Asgardians. Yet, Odin raised him with the expectation that Loki would be Asgardian in all respects. This is not unlike a domestic cat nursing and raising a domestic puppy, and expecting that puppy to be a cat. The puppy can and will ape a lot of feline behaviors – but there are some things a cat can do that no dog on earth can do.

So from the beginning, Loki was set up to fail, either deliberately or accidentally on Odin's behalf. Absolutely no allowance for the differences between Asgardians and Jotuns was made at any point. Every failure to exhibit only Asgardian behavior was met with punishment of one variety or another.

On top of this … there was the Asgardian prejudice where Jotuns were concerned. Absolutely not attempt was made to curtail the verbal vitriol aimed at Jotuns in Loki's presence. Hell, Odin more or less encouraged such talk, even taught such beliefs to both Thor and Loki.

Worse – anyone with any familiarity at all with the royal couple knew, at the very least, that Loki was not actually Frigga's child. Odin had, after all, been far afield at war long before the time when Loki would have been conceived. Most of Asgard assumed Loki to be Odin's bastard, and treated him as such. Some, like Tyr, figured out that Loki was in fact Jotun, his Asgardian appearance be damned. Not all those that figured that out were as reasonable about it as Tyr.

The fact that Odin never once got pissy with anyone that treated Loki badly just allowed that behavior to continue, and escalate.

Then there was the other difference between Jotuns and Asgardians that made growing up in Asgard a serious problem for Loki. Asgardians and Jotuns grow physically at roughly the same rate, but they mature mentally at different rates. Jotunheim is utterly unforgiving and lethal. Its people mature fast because of this. Asgard is not so unforgiving a realm, despite its peoples' penchant for violence, so Asgardians mature more slowly.

Odin and Frigga either didn't know this or made no accommodations for it. At least on Frigga's behalf, there would have been no malice behind such a thing - she would have been worried about people picking up on Loki being expected to act more mature than his agemates and starting to wonder at it. Given Odin's clear desire that Loki know nothing of his true parentage, that was a serious problem.

But the frustration of being treated like a five year old when he was closer to ten mentally (and so on throughout his life) was just one of the persistent problems Loki faced. Plus having to deal with everyone his age being so 'childish' by comparison.

The last big problem Loki faced was that Jotuns used magic - at least ice and water related magic - as easy as breathing. It is quite literally instinctive for them. And Loki was in Asgard, where even the women were limited to healing magic, and men were more or less forbidden magic almost entirely. It really didn't help that Loki, unlike the average Jotun, is incredibly powerful in more than ice/water related magic.

Loki is frighteningly smart. He's curious and cunning and resourceful in about equal measures - which is to say a lot. He is also tricksy and capricious. He does not trust easily or often, but those few he does trust and care for, he guards jealously, and will not hesitate to make anyone dumb enough to torment 'his' people completely miserable in unexpected ways for decades. He's charming and charismatic as hell when he wants to be, and can talk anyone into - or out of - damn near anything. Like Thor, he will hold a grudge until the end of existence. Unlike Thor, he will also take every chance he can find to torment the people he's holding a grudge against.

Loki is currently one of the top twenty magic users in all the Realms, behind Frigga and a bunch of elves. By the time Loki is an old man, he will be in the top five, as Jotun magic gets stronger the older they get. Even if it didn't, Loki would still manage to make it into the top ten thanks to his ability to make the most out of what he's got to work with, whether magically or otherwise.

In line with all of this, Loki is one of the Nine Realms' greatest tacticians and strategists. He is easily capable of complex, detailed, and long-ranging plans, or of coming up with things on the fly. He is a cunning and frighteningly capable fighter. One that is utterly unpredictable, as he uses a fluid mix of magic and weaponry to fight. About the only thing that is predictable about Loki's fighting style is the fact that, given half a chance, he does not engage in melee fighting. While he is not physically weak, he doesn't match the vast majority of Asgardians (and the other Realms, save the elves) in strength and he knows it. He much prefers ranged fighting styles and methods because of this. That said, when he is forced into melee fighting, he compensates for his relative lack of strength by fighting VERY dirty. He will do whatever it takes to win, and to hell with morals, honor, and/or the rules of combat.

Right now, Loki is ... a very big mess. He's one of the other two that are in the top three in terms of PTSD. He is in somewhat better shape than Steve and Bucky, but at some point the denial and 'I am pissed right the hell off' won't be able to keep the rest at bay and at that point he will, rather understandably, become something of a basket case. It will be decades before he comes to any kind of terms with his true parentage, and it is entirely possible that he will never be truly comfortable with it.


	7. Character Bio: Bruce Banner

Character Bio: Bruce Banner

Age: Bruce is 35, but looks closer to 45 thanks to stress.

DD's Bruce is a much bigger mix of movie and other canons than the folks we've talked about so far.

So ... What is movie canon? And from which movies?

Firstly, Hulk came to be because Brian Banner was a moronic asshole who experimented on himself and passed that crap down to Bruce ... and Bruce got between Betty and his other lab partners and a machine blowing up in their lab, as seen in Hulk 2003.

Also as seen in Hulk 2003, Brian Banner was bugfuck nuts and abusive as hell, eventually killing his wife. Bruce has mostly dealt with this by pretending Brian Banner never existed, and neither did his horrifying childhood.

That is all that is DD canon for Hulk 2003. Now for Incredible Hulk.

The vast majority of that movie is canon, except for how Hulk came to be. After the accident, General Ross started chasing Bruce all over, triggering Hulk incidents. Bruce tried a number of things to gain control - meditation, monitoring his heart rate, etc. Then the Culver and Harlem incidents happened.

Now, let's talk Hulk a bit.

Hulk is not a rage monster.

I'mma say that again.

HULK IS NOT A RAGE MONSTER.

Hulk is Bruce's survival instinct given a body and a brain. His function is to keep Bruce alive. Because of this, Bruce will never be able to fully control when Hulk pops out, because if Hulk perceives danger, he's gonna show up, what Bruce wants be damned.

By that same token, Hulk is at least minimally aware of everything at all times. He sees and hears what Bruce sees and hears, otherwise he wouldn't know if a threat was present. Unfortunately, up until the start of DD, Bruce was so invested in getting rid of or controlling Hulk that there was little to no mental contact between the two of them. Hulk saw out of Bruce's eyes and heard out of his ears, but had virtually NO context for what he was seeing and hearing because he couldn't tap into Bruce's knowledge.

The reason Hulk is so ragey? Is all on General Ross. Getting hunted and hounded and poked and prodded when he did not understand a goddamned thing did BAD things for Hulk's emotional control and development. Hulk has the mind of a toddler, basically. He does, however, have the potential to become a fully functional adult being with all that implies. This last is in line with at least some of the comics and cartoon canons.

Back to Bruce.

Bruce is only a few IQ points behind Tony. He tends to be very self-deprecating. He is ... pretty much Tony's polar opposite in a lot of respects. He's quiet, doesn't talk much, and has made an art form out of disappearing and/or getting people to ignore him - which predates the existence of Hulk.

All that said? Bruce is also sarcastic as all hell and has a rather big troll streak. He just tends to be a 'stealth' sass master. Meaning he's really good at the sort of snark it takes people a while to realize is an insult/him giving you shit. Bruce can also out-stubborn even Steve. He's had to learn how to be that stubborn, to keep Hulk at bay in the early days when it seemed like people breathing wrong in his presence had Hulk wanting to come out and smack them one.

Bruce is rather understandably confrontation/violence avoidant. Less so now than previously, but he does still get twitchy as hell when people start shouting or weapons come into the open/physical violence threatens. That said, he *is* capable of getting angry and even defending himself to a limited degree (provided no weapons are in evidence) without Hulk popping up to say hi. Injuries are trickier. Anything more than the sort of nicks you can get cutting food up or the sort of bruise you get from bouncing off a counter when you turn too sharply, and Hulk is a definite possibility.


	8. Character Bio: Clint Barton

Character Bio: Clint Barton

Age: Clint is 30

DD Clint is mostly cartoon/comics canon compliant. Mostly. 

So, what's canon and what's not?

What is canon? The abusive, drunk father, who eventually wrapped his car around a tree with him and his wife in it, killing them both when Clint was five or six. Clint's unpleasant, short (less than a year) stint in foster care with his older brother Barney. Barney pulling them out of the foster system and into a traveling circus. Which ultimately ended up being worse than foster care. Clint leaving the circus at roughly sixteen/seventeen and becoming a mercenary for about five years. SHIELD tracking him down and forcibly bringing him in.

What isn't canon? Clint is not hard of hearing or deaf. I just don't know enough about how that would effect things to write it well. Clint has never been married. He's never had a place in Bed-Stuy. He hasn't met Kate Bishop. YET. 

DD's Clint is asexual. He can, does, and will flirt, but it's not to get in someone's pants. It's to distract them, or get them to loosen up/trust him etc. He has actually had quite a bit of sex, as he didn't figure out the asexual thing until he was in his twenties. He figured his lack of interest in getting his rocks off was a trust thing, not him being honestly disinterested in sex entirely. That he is asexual played an important role in bringing Natasha in when he and Phil approached her. His genuine disinterest in her as a sexual partner (of course she tried her wiles on him when they approached her!) got her interest long enough for him to get a chance to talk.

Phil is extremely important to Clint. It was Phil that helped him learn to trust again, Phil that believed Clint had a brain in his head and encouraged him to get a GED and take whatever classes interested him that SHIELD held, and online college classes. Phil was willing to *trust* Clint and listen to him when he spoke up.

As a result, Phil is one of two people (Natasha being the other) that Clint feels safe enough with to fall asleep if they're in the room with Clint. Phil and Natasha are also the only two people whom Clint trusts even when he's in an altered mental state due to concussion or drugs or whatever. Thankfully that hasn't happened terribly often, but the SHIELD medical staff know not to go anywhere near Clint until Phil or Natasha are present if he's showing signs of agitation. Clint ends up sleeping in the same bed with Phil and/or Natasha fairly frequently outside of missions. Most of SHIELD is utterly convinced they're a threesome due to how the three of them interact.

Clint is quite intelligent in general and can rival even Tony when it comes to math. While he doesn't cop to it, Clint does actually have a Masters in math that he got fairly recently. His ability to do math in his head fast (which he has to for the really tricky shots he makes) is really at PhD level but the odds of him getting one of those before he retires are not good as it would require a lot more time in actual classrooms to earn than he has to give.

Thanks to Clint's trust issues, he tends to be very quiet and reserved with new acquaintances. He stays back and watches, learning about the new people and figuring out if they're trustworthy or not. Once he's decided someone is at least marginally trustworthy, Clint's real personality comes out to play.

With people he's willing to trust to some extent, Clint is playful, snarky, and more than a little impish. He's been known to play pranks on *Natasha* of all people, and live to tell the tale.

Like Steve, Clint has zero tolerance for bullies. He is possibly slightly too comfortable with dealing death - but given that the targets SHIELD aims him at are total scumbags of one variety or another, he sees no real reason to feel guilty for taking such assholes out of the equation. He does have a sense of morals. Even in his merc days, he refused to kill anyone that wasn't a scumbag. Clint is more than a little cynical, pragmatic and practical.

While in 'sniper mode' Clint has the patience of a saint and can remain motionless for hours. He very rarely drinks alcohol, both thanks to his family history and a dislike of how it affects his perceptions and reaction times. Similarly, he doesn't drink much that has caffeine in it because caffeine withdrawal headaches or unsteady hands thanks to too much caffeine in his system are a huge no-no. A cup of coffee in the morning is about his limit.


	9. Character Bio: Natasha Romanov

Character Bio: Natasha Romanov

Age: Natasha is 67

DD Natasha is mostly cartoon/comics canon compliant. Mostly. 

Ok, so. Red Skull disappears. Steve goes down in the ice. Zola defects. And Hydra basically freaks right the hell out. Most of them headed for the hills, but the ones that did so wanted to keep Hydra alive and knew they would eventually need totally loyal minions. And if they could get a few Red Skulls on their team, so much the better.

Kids, from newborn right on up to ten or so (so long as they were still pre-pubescent) started disappearing all over the place. The infant that would become Natasha was stolen from a hospital in 1945, though she does not know this. She has no idea who her parents were. They could actually still be alive for all she knows.

She was one of thirty children who survived the application of whatever bastardized version of the Serum Hydra was trying on each batch of kids. All the survivors were under two years old. All but five of that initial thirty were female. This was because infant girls were easier to source than infant boys, so there were more girls in what became the Red Room program than boys to start with.

Unfortunately, twenty of the kids, including all the boys, either died during further experimentation, suffered a catastrophic failure of the Serum resulting in death, did not meet Hydra's standards during training / went batshit crazy and were put down. Of the remaining ten, Natasha was the best. This fact earned her a stint of training under the Winter Soldier - which ultimately led to her going rogue in her late twenties.

The problem with that lay in the training she got. Hydra trained the girls to be chameleons. Whatever personality, likes and dislikes etc would allow the girl to get close to their target, they had to be able to pull off faultlessly. Unfortunately, to Hydra's way of thinking, pulling things off that well for potentially months or even years meant the girls could absolutely not have any real identity of their own. After all, if the girl absolutely loathed, say, country music, but her target loved it and liked to listen to it with his girlfriend (who just happened to be a Widow) ... well, sooner or later the Widow would break character, right?

So when she went rogue, literally all Natasha knew was life as a Widow. For a while, pretty much nothing changed except that she was deciding on victims, not being handed assignments from someone else. It took her nearly a decade to develop anything resembling a base personality. Once she had that base personality, she decided the Red Room was evil incarnate and started killing off all of them she could find. Because of this, there are only three Widows still living, Natasha, Yelena, and one other that's been on long-term assignment and out of Natasha's reach since she found where that Widow was at. She also managed to get to a few Red Room bases and ... empty them, resulting in the death of roughly two dozen 'scientists' and 'support personnel'.

It took a couple more decades for her to start tiring of a life of assassinations and not much else and long for something more, though like hell did she know what, at which point she started getting just sloppy enough that people could track her. Fortunately for her, it was Phil and Clint that SHIELD sent after her, and they got to her first.

To this day, she struggles to define and *keep* a base personality unique to herself that does not exist for mission purposes. Sliding into an alternate personality borders on being instinctive for her, and is something she has to actively stop herself from doing. She's still figuring out her own likes and dislikes and even a sense of humor. 

Because she has to actively consider if she likes something or finds it funny, or it pisses her off whenever she comes across something new, and has to remind herself what she decided on stuff she's dealt with previously, she comes across as having a very flat affect if she is 'being herself'. 

Phil and Clint have helped enormously with her developing a unique personality, as they are quite happy to expose her to things, and Phil actually tracks her expressed likes and dislikes and such, and reminds her if she gets tangled up. When she's not with Phil and Clint but has to interact with people for non-mission purposes, she still finds it easier to slip into an 'alternate' personality. She's very aware of the fact that her flat affect tends to scare the ever loving shit out of people or creep them out, so unless that's her goal, she finds something that won't do that and goes with it.

Natasha is aromantic. Unlike with Clint, this is a product of the training she went through rather than her own personal choice. There may eventually come a day when the concept of romance doesn't give her a migraine trying to figure out the particulars, but that won't be for a VERY long time.

In the meantime, if Natasha is flirting with you? YOU HAVE A PROBLEM. Sex is a weapon insofar as she is concerned, nothing more. Tony is one of the VERY few people to survive an encounter with Natasha on a mission, mostly because she is usually wasted on initial reconnaissance, since that makes it all but impossible to insert her into the target's life again later. She's done a few protection gigs with SHIELD, but not many.

At this point, Natasha truly doesn't understand love. The complexities involved in that emotion sort of break her brain. Friendship is not much better. Possessiveness and protectiveness she gets because they're simpler, 'This is mine, no one is allowed to damage it' without any of the stuff that goes into calling someone a friend. So while she does not think of Phil and Clint as friends - they are *hers* and god help anyone that hurts either of them. Seriously, Loki has NO IDEA how lucky he is that he was as much a victim as he made Clint, because otherwise she *would* have found a way to kill him.

Natasha trusts Phil and Clint as much as she is capable of, given her circumstances. That Clint is asexual helped a *lot* in the early days of their acquaintance. If he was uninterested in sex, he was hanging out with her for other reasons, which had been literally nonexistent for her up to then. It made her want to find out why, which meant staying to observe. It didn't take long for her interest to expand to Phil, who made it very clear from day one that he would never pursue her sexually, and kept reiterating it until she started to believe it.

Natasha, like Clint, absolutely requires either Phil or Clint's presence in medical. In her case, it's *whenever* she's in medical, whether she's in an altered mental state or not. Being injured in the Red Room was not a good thing. That combined with the experimentation they did on her as a child, and Natasha absolutely does not trust medical personnel as far as she can throw the Helicarrier. She trusts the two of them to keep the medical personnel from doing anything they oughtn't. More importantly, she trusts them to keep her from doing something regrettable, as she has a tendency to lash out at people attempting to patch her up thanks to the whole 'being injured = bad news' thing.


	10. Character Bio: Remy LeBeau

Character Bio: Remy LeBeau

Age: Remy is 24

DD's Remy is strictly cartoon/comics compliant. NO movie compliance whatever because ... yeah. Just no. But a lot of cartoon and comics stuff isn't canon in DD.

Firstly: As he is cartoon/comics canon, Remy has auburn hair and eyes that have black sclera and brilliant red irises. Remy is one of the VERY few in this fic that I have a mental picture of that might clash with some of my readers.

What isn't canon? The Thieves and Assassin's guilds. Because that shit is just nuts. Sinister and Apocalypse (whom cartoon/comics Remy has links to) DO NOT EXIST. Period. And never will. Because that storyline gave me migraines.

What is canon? Remy was born with the eyes, his parents freaked and dumped him. Someone found him before he died and raised him. For a value of raised. Remy spent the first ten years of his life as a largely ignorant self-taught street thief. Then he tried to pick the pocket of Jean-Luc LeBeau. And while the Guild might not exist, Mr. LeBeau *was* one of those really, really good high-class thieves. And Mr. LeBeau taught Remy everything he knew over the next five years, both more traditional subjects and the hows and wherefores of high-caliber thievery.

Unfortunately at that point, Remy's powers manifested, and given what his powers ARE, he had to leave town in order to not get hunted down and killed or worse. Mr. LeBeau stayed behind, maintaining the fiction that Remy ran away in public so the cops and more unfortunate people didn't pay attention to him too closely as the only link to Remy. In secret, he stayed in contact with Remy and financed him until Remy got some control and started making his own living. At that point, Mr. LeBeau was able to be more open and public about being in contact with Remy, since he was now fully able to defend himself from all comers.

Remy, while not a genius, is a lot smarter than most people give him credit for, especially when they hear he's a thief. Remy takes full and vicious advantage of this all the time, both on jobs and off, playing up the 'dumb old Cajun boy' act.

In reality, he's worked hard to rid himself of as much of his accent as he can, as it's far too distinctive and memorable to be stuck with it all the time.

Remy came to the X-Men's attention when he got cornered into a fight even he couldn't win alone. He's good, but twenty to one odds are a bit much. Especially when the enemy is smart enough to pin him down in the middle of a desert and goad him into using up most of his usual ammunition while staying out of range of his acrobatics. Remy can light sand up, but it's pretty worthless. Individual grains don't hold much of a charge, and they spread too far too fast in anything shy of a high wind (the sort that kicks up enormous walls of sand) for a charge to successfully 'jump' along the grains to a target.

He got lucky because Xavier was using Cerebro at the time for another purpose and noticed the ... rather large flare ... that Remy's use of his powers set off and sent in the X-Men.

Three guesses who was after Remy. Bet y'all get it right on the first guess.

Remy does have some minor empathy. Enough to pick up on the moods of people around him, and if he's careful, to influence the moods of the unknowing. Provided they have no mental protections, have no idea he is trying to manipulate their mood, and they aren't really worked up.

His body is also altered from human normal. Some of his muscles and ligaments don't hook up to his bones the way a 'normal' person's do. Like a cat, his vertebrae are loosely connected. Because of that, other muscles and ligaments are attached slightly differently, allowing for maximum bend and stretch.

Remy is pragmatic and practical. He's also a bit of a perfectionist which is probably a good thing considering his chosen career. Despite what a lot of people tend to think, he's not randomly sticky-fingered. He doesn't filch the random (if valuable) bits and bobs people leave out. To his mind, not only is doing so extremely rude if he's an invited guest, but it lacks a challenge when it's stuff he encounters on a job. What's a watch or some cufflinks sitting out on a dresser or what have you against art and designer jewels, and the other sorts of things people keep in vaults or under high security?

He always has at least two packs of cards on him at all times. Which is the equivalent of a hundred and four bullets. Which is why he started using cards as his weapon of choice in the first place. Nothing else he could think of held so many 'bullets' in such a thoroughly innocuous and small package that was easy to deal with. He could have used sunflower seeds or the like, but the packaging is awkward and individual seeds difficult to pick up and throw in a hurry.


	11. Character Bio: Logan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be advised that the Pre-Fic Timeline (Chapter 2) has been expanded considerably. Go take a peek!

Character Bio: Logan

Age: Logan is 157

Logan ... is complicated, canon wise. About ninety percent of the Marvel cartoons and comics canon is just plain *insane*. So a long time ago I stripped it all down to something that was a lot saner.

So ... what's the deal?

Logan was born James Howlett in the mid 1800's in Canada. He was very sickly as a little kid. He manifested when the drunk help killed his father, whereupon he was forced to run.

That said ... Sabretooth is in no way, shape, or form related to Logan. They do have a history together - they met at some point and Sabretooth being the homicidal sociopath that he is, that did not go well. Sabretooth ended up fixating on Logan and literally hunting him on and off through the years, resulting in some epic fights.

Logan ended up being drawn into the soldier's life. He'd pick a side (whichever one he agreed with the most) and insert himself into the battle, then either arrange his 'death' or just disappear into the ether when it was over. Wars being a little on the crazy side, and documenting which soldiers came from where and were assigned to which unit being as iffy as it was pre-computers, he got away with it.

Unfortunately for him, tech finally got to the point where someone noticed that the guy from this war and the guy from that war looked identical, hadn't aged a day, and were soldiers for completely different countries. Though neither he nor Steve knows this ... it was largely due to Logan's month-long participation in the hunt for Hydra bases.

While Logan was never recorded in any of the film reels, his name and face became known to a lot of people. Most importantly, to Hydra. When he popped up a bit less than a decade later in the Korean War ... well. That, as they say, was that.

Hydra used the methods they'd refined on Winter Soldier on Logan. To a far greater degree of success. Logan, unlike Bucky, didn't have something or someone to cling to to fight the brainwashing, enforced amnesia, and so on.

Unfortunately, as with Winter Soldier, there was still a problem. Rooted in Logan's mutation.

Firstly - despite his code name, Logan's mutation is not based on that of a wolverine. It's based on a wolf.

Secondly - All of Logan's senses are enhanced to some degree. Scent and sound are by far the most enhanced. Scent is roughly double that of the best a dog can do, and sound is about the same. Touch is his least enhanced sense at just barely past the best a human can manage.

Thirdly - Logan's healing factor, while extreme, is nowhere near as ridiculous as it is sometimes portrayed in various canons. He can heal from virtually any injury in a matter of seconds to minutes depending on the severity. He would not, however, be able to survive a close encounter with a rocket, never mind a nuclear blast. The adamantium on his bones protects him from several potential means of death that would otherwise work, such as decapitation and removal of his heart and lungs. He can heal fast, but regenerating one or more organs vital to life before his body gives out is not within his ability.

Logan's mutation is far more than enhanced senses, super healing, and bone claws. He got a lot of canine instincts as well. When the torture got to be too much, Logan-the-man retreated and that primal, feral, instinctive part of him took the brunt of the abuse.

Animals, broadly speaking, have one of two reactions to abuse. They either become submissive and fearful OR they start lashing out at anything or anyone that gets anywhere near them. Logan's inner animal went the latter way. And therein lay the problem, for Hydra. Their killing machine was basically an animal, didn't understand orders, and didn't discriminate targets. The best they could do was let Logan out of a cage and point him at whatever they wanted killed while making *damn* sure none of their people were in his path, because he killed anyone who got in his way.

Eventually, this led to Logan escaping when he was let out of his cage for a mission and instead killed everyone in the Hydra base he'd been in and ran.

It took a while, but eventually Logan-the-man pushed the inner animal back down, but ... yeah. It's still pissy as hell and prone to lashing out. Logan can and does keep it under control for the most part, but if he gets pushed too far (like during the Liberty Island fuckup) he can slip up to greater or lesser degrees. 

Unfortunately, pushed past a certain point (which is thankfully hard to do) there is literally no reasoning with Logan because at that point he will be more animal than man and literally not understand words. Fortunately for everyone around him, Logan gives subconscious cues that his instincts are acting up. His body language shifts to something more animalistic. Doubly fortunately, while Logan may occasionally lose control, he can and does regain it, though if he's lost control completely he generally doesn't come back to himself until he's surrounded by dead bodies.

Logan is VERY aware that his claws are extremely deadly. Because of this, he never, under any circumstances, makes fist-gestures at friends or allies. No fist-bumps, playful flipping people off, or the like. (As funny as it was, pretend that Logan flipping Scott off with a claw in X 1 never happened). He only makes a fist as a blatant threat, or in preparation to fight.

Despite everything he's been through, Logan has a very strong sense of morals and right vs wrong. He is, at heart, a 'good' man. Which might seem odd to say about someone who has zero compunctions with killing people. But to Logan's mind, killing one man (or woman) is FAR better than letting that person live and keep on hurting or killing others, in the hope they'll reform and become a better person.

Which would be the root of his difficulties with the X-Men, who don't believe in killing for any reason. Because if it had been possible, Logan would have killed Magneto and not suffered a moment's difficulty over it.

Logan isn't much for talking. He is very much an 'actions speak louder than words' sort of person, and doesn't see any point in chattering unnecessarily. He's gruff and growly in his dealings with most adults. He's pragmatic almost to a fault and slightly pessimistic. He is also ridiculously protective of people he's decided to protect for whatever reason - see also X-Men 1 for proof of THAT. He is stubborn and relentless - once he's set his mind on something, he does not give up on it, come hell or high water.

He's something of a pied piper with kids and young teens. They pick up on his protective streak, and his air of 'absolutely nothing will ever fuck with me because if anything tries I will beat its ass' and tend to gravitate towards him, especially during crises. It helps that for all his issues inter-relating with adults, Logan has nearly inexhaustible amounts of patience and gentleness when dealing with kids.


	12. Character Bio: John Allerdyce

Character Bio: John Allerdyce

Age: John is a month shy of 17 as of Chapter 83

John is strictly Movies and head canon, as the comics/cartoon Pyro is *wildly* different than the movie version.

When I started building a canon for John, I used all three X-Men movies that he's in as a base, even if what happened past X 1 isn't canon, because it gave me more to work with.

So. John's mutation is fire control. He cannot start fires with his powers like some other fire-weilding mutants and mutates can, but any fire within a certain distance of him (how far depends on how big the fire is), he can control and manipulate to an untold degree. It is easier for him to control fires he starts manually

Knowing this, and seeing that John in the movies was a very angry, distrusting young man, well, that's where I started. Because let's face it. A mutation like that? Pretty much guarantees a very traumatic manifestation. But that didn't answer for why he was so pissed at the world.

So. John is from small-town middle America. The sort of town where everyone knows everyone else's business, and where things can and do get swept under the rug for any of a variety of reasons. John's parents were drunks - abusive and violent drunks. Mostly to each other but John did get caught in the crossfire often enough for it to be a problem. For whatever reason, this state of affairs was never corrected by authorities.

Then when he was ten, he manifested in the middle of one of their more spectacular fights, and blew up half the block, killing his parents and the neighbors to either side instantly and injuring everyone else in the blast radius to varying degrees. John rather understandably freaked right the hell out and ran.

But he had no control whatever, which meant that everywhere he went, fires went out of control. Usually in very spectacular ways. John ended up living on the edges of human civilization for a couple years, staying well away from any sources of fire in an effort to not accidentally burn the world down. This meant a lot of stealing and, in the year before he was found, selling himself to have a roof over his head and food in his belly.

By the time Xavier found him, John was rather thoroughly pissed off at the world, pessimistic, cynical, and untrusting as all hell. He was also stubborn and independent as fuck. The only person in the mansion who could relate to the life John'd had to live for four years had a stick rammed so far up his backside most of the kids thought he was a robot.

The only one in the mansion that got through to John was Bobby. And their relationship freaked Xavier right the hell out, because it was rather a lot like watching himself and Erik all over again. As a result, Xavier couldn't quite help but treat John a little as a Magneto in the making, which REALLY didn't help matters.

Enter Logan. Who impressed (and scared the holy hell out of) everyone in the mansion with his week-long war to keep Rogue safe. Who is pragmatic as hell and extremely patient and tolerant with kids. And who understands and can speak 'pissed off at the world'. It made a difference. John is still pessimistic, cynical, twitchy and untrusting to a large degree, but the bitterness is slowly fading and the anger is much lessened.

John is incredibly street savvy, as befits someone who survived four years on their own. He, like the others in the bunch that don't trust easily (which is most of them) is protective as hell of the few people he trusts. He's also *not* shy about his willingness to burn the world down (literally) to keep them safe. His morals are a little shaky and on the shady side of good. It wouldn't take much to tip him into 'bad guy' territory, as he has no compunctions with killing people. Unlike some of the others that have that mindset, he's not particularly picky about whether the person is a threat or not. That said, given more time and guidance, he can pull himself into a solidly 'good guy' mindset.


	13. Character Bio: Rogue

Character Bio: Rogue

Age: Rogue is 16, a couple months younger than John.

Rogue is, again, strictly movie and headcanons. Mostly because the comics/cartoon Rogue was either Mystique's daughter by birth or adoption or had a LOT of contact with Mystique, and this is very much not true for DD's Rogue.

Rogue was born Marie D'ancanto, in Georgia. The first fifteen years of her life were ... thoroughly ordinary in all respects. That all went to hell in a handbasket when she manifested as a mutant. In the middle of kissing her then-boyfriend.

Between the fact she had most of her boyfriend's personality and thoughts running around in her brain and the fact the neighbors (this being small-town Georgia) weren't any too happy to have a 'freak' in their midst, Rogue ran less than a week after she manifested. It took the better part of a month for her to be able to reliably tell her boyfriend's thoughts and urges from her own. She doesn't know it, but her parents were not on the list of people she needed to run from. They are, in fact, trying to find her.

Rogue headed north on her run, both because she'd wanted to see Alaska and because her long sleeves and hoodies would be worthy of little to no notice in such cold climes. People being the assholes they can occasionally be, Rogue had to use her skin against a few creepy assholes along the way. Unfortunately for her, this drew attention. From Magneto. She ended up in the dinky town of Laughlin City, where she ran across Logan. The rest, as they say, is history.

Rogue is, in many respects, a Southern Belle. She is sweet and charming and gentle and has a spine of adamantium hidden under those velvet gloves and behind that sweet, charming smile. She had that spine even before she got a big dose of Logan's personality dumped into her head. After all, she had the balls to hitch a ride with Logan *after* seeing him in action with the claws. She sassed Magneto and Mystique. She didn't truly fall apart at the seams until she was actually in the machine and seconds away from it being turned on, with (as far as she knew at the time) absolutely no hope of escape, because the machine was made of metal and Magneto could control metal.

Rogue's mutation is a rough one. The worst part of it being that, contrary to what she thinks, it's not stuck 'on'. Her mutation is a defense mechanism and controlled by her emotional state. If she's afraid, it's on. Unfortunately, what her mutation can do terrifies the hell out of her, so it has been perpetually 'on' since she manifested. If she ever finds a way to calm down about it, she'll start to be able to control turning it on and off.

Her power is rather extreme. Ten seconds of skin-to-skin contact is enough to put an unenhanced human into a coma that will last anywhere from a week to months. The same time period with a mutant or mutate is enough to grant Rogue that person's powers for as much as a half hour as well as knocking those with no healing factor or a low-grade one into a coma. Only those mutants and mutates with high-end healing factors won't get knocked into a coma. Even then, all but Deadpool would be forced into taking a nap for at least a few hours while their bodies recuperated. Deadpool's healing factor is such that he wouldn't even get sleepy, never mind lose consciousness.

Rogue does not know this (yet), but as with the comics/cartoons, if she holds on long enough, she can kill an unenhanced human or a mutant/mutate who doesn't have a high-end healing factor. She can also gain powers on a permanent basis if she holds on that long, or gets repeated smaller doses from the same person in a short period of time.


	14. Character Bio: Bobby Drake

Character Bio: Bobby Drake

Age: Bobby is 16, just a month younger than John

Bobby is mostly movie canon, with dashes of comics/cartoon and headcanons.

Bobby was born and raised in Boston. He's got a younger brother. His life was really ordinary until he manifested at age ten.

Unlike a lot of mutants, Bobby was able to hide his manifestation. Mostly because he manifested in the winter and the oddities that cropped up due to his mutation got written off as typical winter bullshit. It also helped that his mutation didn't blow wide open and, oh, say, freeze half the town or the like. It kicked in in dribs and drabs at first, resulting in things like frozen pipes, or an icy stretch of sidewalk.

Charles picked up on Bobby at the tail end of winter, right about when Bobby's luck with hiding his mutation was going to run out. With a little help, Bobby stayed in control long enough for him to convince his parents to transfer him to a new school for the gifted thanks to his talents in math. To this day, his parents and brother have no idea he's a mutant.

Bobby's mutation is extremely strong, though he has not yet tapped into his full potential. He can currently freeze water at will on a small scale, and shape it into anything he wants. Much more than freezing a few square feet worth of ice, however, and Bobby starts getting twitchy. Mostly because he knows he could keep going, could freeze ... well, quite a lot of water. Maybe not all the water on the planet, maybe not even half of it, but ... yeah. His biggest fear is that he'll start freezing ... and not want to stop.

Meeting John, despite their rocky start, was an incredible relief for Bobby. Because John is very, very close to Bobby's power level. Enough so that they largely cancel each other out, neither of them able to overcome the other in power-based training. Which meant that if Bobby went off the rails, John could keep it from getting out of control.

Ororo is awesome, but ... she controls weather. And ice and water aren't weather. A product of it, to be sure, and something she could weaponize, but ... yeah. About the only thing she could do to stop him would be to suck all the moisture out of the air. Possible for her, of course, but given how much area she'd have to do that to, not all that practical.

His issues with his powers aside, Bobby is cheerful, playful, optimistic, and more than a bit of a prankster. He's also very much a geek, and found a soulmate of sorts in this regard in Hank. Though Bobby had to work for that. He came to the mansion not long after Hank's transformation - roughly a year after. Hank had more or less locked himself in his lab since. Bobby was brought to the lab for a checkup and to see whether and how his mutation had changed his body ... and was entranced by the big, blue, furry doctor as only a young kid could be (Bobby called him Cookie Monster for *months*). Bobby pretty much refused to take 'no' for an answer, and Hank being a gentle soul, he couldn't be rude or mean to the ten year old kid with the big blue puppydog eyes.

Bobby is the longest-term resident of the mansion, aside from the adults. Between that and his age at the time he started coming to the mansion, he more or less became everyone's kid brother, and as a result gets away with stunts that no one else would even dare contemplate. Mostly, it has to be admitted, because the other kids are intimidated to varying degrees by the adults' public behavior, which tends towards aloof and strait-laced and apparently humorless. But Bobby knows better. He got to see the lot of them acting like utter doofuses from time to time before there were a whole lot of kids in the mansion. And he takes great pleasure in trying to get them to loosen back up a bit.

Oddly enough, given his fears about his own mutation, Bobby is in most other regards utterly fearless. It takes a LOT of courage to try to intimidate Logan. Especially having a good idea of exactly what Logan is capable of.


	15. Character BIo: Phil Coulson

Character Bio: Phil Coulson

Age: Phil is 45

Due to the fact that Phil didn't exist in canon until the movies, he is almost entirely headcanon, with the aid of what little can be gleaned about him from the movies.

Phil is the only child of two military officers. Both of his parents are still living. His father is ... well, quite a bit like Phil. Quiet, competent, and unassuming ... and thoroughly terrifying when he needs to be. His mother (like a LOT of the women in my world) is the obviously formidable one in the family.

It should hardly be surprising that a military brat got exposed to Captain America at a very early age. Phil never did (and never will) grow out of the fanboy stage, though he got better at hiding it. Until he was faced with the real article, at which point dignity and decorum took a hike. Though, in his defense ... *Captain America*. *Alive*. Pretty much anyone would lose their cool over that.

Clint and Natasha will NEVER let him live down the fact that he truly did almost swoon when Steve was recovered from the ice. Phil maintains that Steve scared the ever loving hell out of everyone by still being alive when they thawed the body in preparation to give him a proper funeral. Two of the morgue techs actually did pass out. Clint and Nat just remind him he almost-swooned long before that event.

At any rate, Phil decided young that he was going into the service. He wanted, badly, to emulate Steve insomuch as he was able. That was why he chose the Rangers, in lieu of a unit like the Howling Commandos. It wasn't easy. Phil was not, and remains, a less than spectacular physical specimen. In point of fact, he was rather shorter and lighter than the usual Ranger.

Phil, in true Steve Rogers fashion, didn't let that slow him down, never mind stop him. He learned to compensate for his lack of bulk and, eventually, learned how to take brutal advantage of his very average and forgettable appearance, a skill he put to full use when he joined SHIELD.

He served with distinction enough that he caught SHIELD's eye. Ironically enough, despite deeply regretting joining the agency due to its problematic moral stances, it was in the agency that Phil found his niche.

Specifically, handling field agents no one else would go anywhere near for whatever reasons. Clint was by no means the first troubled agent to be dumped at his door, even if he was the most infamous. Natasha is disqualified from the 'dumped at his door' group due to her utter refusal to work with anyone else or she'd have been the most infamous.

Phil takes immense, if quiet, pride in his place as someone both Clint and Natasha trust. The first time each of them fell asleep in his presence rate as two of the best days of his life. As a result, Phil is very nearly rabid about protecting the two of them from the worst of SHIELD's excesses. Neither of them have any idea how many times he's gotten in Fury's face over some bone-headed idea or mission Fury wanted to implement, or scared the life out of some medical twit that wanted samples from Natasha, or what have you.

Phil is not *quite* as calm and collected as he pretends, though he truly is fairly phlegmatic of temperament. He does lose his cool from time to time, though he generally manages to keep such incidents private. The rare few times he's blown his cool in public have become SHIELD legends. He has an extremely dry sense of humor - which is the entire reason he enjoys horrible reality shows. He finds the (frequently) staged histronics hilarious in light of the shenanigans that occur during the course of his job because as ridiculous as the reality shows get, they don't come close to matching the insanity he's dealt with over the years.

Despite year of experience in being a handler, Phil wasn't quite ready for the Avengers. Mostly because the lot of them almost instantly folded him right into their midst. Even *Stark*, who had been something of a problem child in their earlier encounters.


	16. Character Bio: Charles Xavier

Character Bio: Charles Xavier

Age: Charles is 77

Charles is movie canon compliant for X 1 only. Cartoon and comics canons and headcanons take care of the rest.

So. What's the what?

Charles IS NOT related to Juggernaut. As fun as that could be, just ... eh. NO. His parents were very rich and ... very absent from his life, as tends to be the norm for the very rich. Charles was mostly raised by the help, not his parents.

Similarly, Charles did not meet Mystique until after he met Erik.

Charles was at pretty much the perfect age to be totally besotted with Steve during World War Two. The odds of him having gone to see Steve during Steve's USO days are *incredibly high*. Fortunately for Charles, his mutation didn't manifest until he reached puberty, after the war had ended. Doubly fortunately, his telepathy didn't blow wide open right from the start, either. Like with Bobby, it started in dribs and drabs. In fact, Charles dismissed it as instinct, gut feelings, or just being good with people for over a year.

Triply fortunately for him, once things did get to the point where he was clearly reading peoples' minds and knew it, he was able to convince his very rich parents to bring tutors to him, rather than continue going out to school. With only a dozen people at most in the mansion at any one time, and very few people in the surrounding area, it allowed Charles a bit of a cushion where his powers were concerned, and gave him the opportunity that he needed to learn how to control his telepathy.

Charles met Erik during his college days. Erik himself was not in college - he was too twitchy and suspicious even then to manage in a college atmosphere.

Charles tripped head over heels into love.

Yes, this means that Charles/Erik is canon, at least in the past tense, for Damaged Defenders.

Erik took a while to reciprocate. Long enough for the pair of them to become close, good friends despite their different philosophies. Unfortunately, those philosophies eventually drove Charles and Erik apart.

Fortunately for everyone involved, their parting of ways bore no resemblance to the SNAFU that it was in the First Class movie. There was a lot of yelling involved, but they parted ways peaceably, as Erik had not quite gotten to the point of following through with his violent tendencies.

What Charles continues to fail to realize is the breaking of their partnership was every bit as much his fault as it was Erik's.

See, Charles grew up largely under his own aegis and the occasional guidance of the mansion help. As a result, he was very awkward and socially stunted. Then he got telepathy. And without realizing it, started using it as a crutch. Where other people would *talk* to someone to find out about them, or try to find out what's going on if they're upset, or what have you, Charles' first reaction was to use his telepathy. Only folks with really strong mental shields would ever have even noticed, and folks like that were hard to come by until the last two decades or so, when the bumper crop of mutants started being born. Charles can scan peoples' minds fast enough that he appeared charming and charismatic and whatever else the situation needed.

And he did this, as a matter of course, to Erik. Who got understandably pissy about it. Worse, Charles tried to convince Erik of the error of his ways via this method. The problem got compounded when Charles was paralyzed. Charles had gone hiking and a large stone unexpectedly shifted and rolled, pinning him under it and crushing his spine and legs. Fortunately, he was able to mentally call for help, or he'd have died.

Charles didn't take his paralysis well at first. He got very snappish and defensive and had a bad tendency to aim it all at Erik, the only person around at the time. As the saying goes, things snowballed and Erik had enough.

Erik may have left, but he did come back from time to time, and the two of them collaborated on a number of things, like the subbasements and Cerebro. Unfortunately, Magneto eventually truly did become Magneto, tipping over into 'gonna kill people' territory, and that was the end of that.

It wasn't until Erik was gone for good that Charles started collecting mutant kids. Jean was the first, followed by Hank, then Scott, then Ororo and Warren, despite being older than all of the others, joined last, and thanks to Tony (whom Charles had met before then thanks to Scott's control issues).

Charles is both an optimist and a pacifist. He's meddlesome, but generally has peoples' best interests in mind, though his execution of his meddling generally leaves something to be desired. Bobby and John scare the shit out of him most of the time because they could be himself and Erik all over again. He finds people like Logan (and Clint and ... ok, basically? All of the Avengers except for Steve), who can kill others without remorse more than a little horrifying, no matter how bad the person they killed was. If he'd been old enough at the time, he would have genuinely lobbied HARD for *Hitler* to not be put to death (if he'd been caught alive), just to give you a clue how much he disapproves of killing.

Charles' mutation, like Bobby's, is incredibly strong. Without the aid of Cerebro, he can take full and complete control of every human being in a one mile radius around him for as much as a half hour. He can mentally speak to a psi-blind individual up to three thousand miles away, someone who is not a telepath but not psi-blind (which is most of the population) for double that distance, and to a fellow telepath halfway around the world. That said, Charles only mentally speaks to the psi-blind in a dire emergency because that sort of contact with them gives them migraines, regardless of the distance between them and Charles, or the length of the contact. With the aid of Cerebro, Charles could literally take over the minds and bodies of roughly 2 billion people for as long as he could stay awake, or contact a psi-blind person anywhere around the world (ditto for everyone else).


	17. Character Bio: Pepper Potts

Character Bio: Pepper Potts

Age: Pepper is 35

Pepper is the youngest of three kids, the elder two being brothers. From a very early age, Pepper decided she was not going to have any of that 'overprotective big brother' nonsense going on. She became a tomboy, and refused to be limited to 'girl' things.

Somewhere before her teens, she discovered Peggy Carter, who promptly became her idol and the person she aspired to someday become (though she has never admitted that out loud to anyone).

She succeeded incredibly well in that task, though she doesn't really think she has. Because Pepper is driven, scarily competent, doesn't take shit from *anyone*, completely ignores the 'normal' expectations for a woman to do what she wants, and generally terrifies any man with sense when she's on the warpath.

Ironically enough, aside from being awesome like Peggy, Pepper didn't really know what she ultimately wanted to do with her life, as a teen and in her early twenties. She worked her way through college (she had grades good enough for scolarships, but those didn't cover all the costs) and managed to secure a job in the SI secretary pool. It was a rather ignominious beginning, but Pepper was aware of SI's reputation - to whit, that those that worked hard and/or were exceptional at their jobs got generously rewarded. There were opportunities above and beyond the pool - that was just a foot in the door.

But not even Pepper dreamed she'd get as far as she has.

Back in those days, Tony was going through secretaries the way a person with a cold goes through tissues. They either couldn't handle his public persona, the workload that went with being the personal secretary of the CEO/R & D wunderkind of the company, or there was a severe personality clash. Pepper got thrown under that bus about a month after she got into the pool.

The first year was complete, utter hell. Pepper wanted to kill Tony pretty much constantly. He flirted with her as a matter of course, but at that point he didn't mean it at all, and she was bright enough to realize that, even if she didn't (yet) understand why, then, he was flirting with her. They got into some spectacular knock-down-drag-out fights.

Then Tony started to trust her, and the 'real' Tony started peeking out from behind the public mask. Things calmed down between them as he slowly stopped pushing at her to make her break. And somewhere in the next couple years, Pepper started to fall for the idiot.

She was horrified, and hid it. Tony, being really bad at emotions in general, didn't figure it out. For which mercy Pepper was deeply grateful. The two of them continued to work together for years.

Until Afghanistan happened.

Pepper had always been vaguely uneasy around Obadiah. He tried to come across as friendly and approachable, but there had always been something vaguely smarmy and dishonest about him. Nothing Pepper could ever point at and say 'he's up to no good'. Just enough to make her uncomfortable.

Tony will NEVER know the details of what happened while he was in Afghanistan. Hell, not even Rhodey knows. Obadiah tried to charm her into giving him certain computer codes that only Tony had known, and that she had been privy to as his secretary and occasional help when he was up to his elbows in a project. The smarm and dishonest came out to play a lot more, enough to make her twitchy. She was pretty convinced he was working his way up to getting her fully under his control somehow, or killing her (which news Tony would respond incredibly badly to).

Enough to make her willing to believe and help Tony when he told her Obadiah was ... well, up to no good.

Things got very odd very quickly when Rhodey brought Tony back, and not just with Stane, but with Tony. Pepper got caught a bit flat footed because Tony rather abruptly dropped the vast majority of his public persona and became incredibly serious and more driven than ever. And got incredibly awkward and hesitant with her out of nowhere, when he tried to flirt with her.

She'd seen him like that once or twice, with women he was genuinely interested in over the years. She'd had to sit down and have a good think about whether or not to go there, because she knew just how much damage she could do to Tony if things went south between them. She was one of the few people he trusted, and losing her would devastate him. So she had to be sure she could truly handle what Tony would throw at her.

Her having been mostly in love with him for over a decade at that point, that she decided a relationship between them was worth fighting for was hardly surprising. They still fight, and Pepper's reacted badly to things a few times, but she's never truly regretted taking that step with Tony.

Pepper is, for the most part, very cool, calm, and collected. But she can be incredibly fierce when needed, and while her fuse is surprisingly long, she does have a temper to lose - and when she does, it gets kind of scary.


	18. The Realms

The Realms

Ok, So. Firstly, never fear, there WILL be more Character Bios. But I've been getting a lot of questions about the Realms in the comments on the story, so I figured I'd do up some pages on them.

Some general information first, that applies to all the realms.

The Nine Realms are connected for a reason. They are (or were) all planets that, for whatever reason, have similar enough environments to allow beings from the other Realms to live there comfortably. There are variations in gravity, atmosphere density and makeup, and such, but the variances are pretty small.

This does not mean that each Realm exists in a vacuum. Each Realm is, in effect, a doorway to the galaxy they reside in, if you've got the means to travel in space. That said, only Earth shares its sun with other planets. All the others are alone in their orbits, and the next nearest star with planets that might have resources are prohibitive distances away for a war effort, making them utterly useless to Thanos as staging grounds. He could potentially have his Chitauri swarm any one of the other Realms and strip it bare, but that would slow him down big time, as the Chitauri would be forced to switch to 'mining resources' for years, potentially decades, before they could go back to war. Thanos is too interested in killing everyone to be interested in *slow*.

If he conquers Earth, he has all the asteroids and planets in the Sun's orbit to mine for resources, not to mention a captive population to do the work, freeing most of his Chitauri to attack the other Realms.

Now, throughout the story, I've left hints that Frigga, and now Bestla, know something the humans don't regarding mutants. Several folks have picked up on this and started asking about it, which, go everyone that asked. I adore it when people pick up on and ask about the hints I drop.

See, the Realms have more than their environments in common. They also have an evolutionary path in common. A long, long, long time ago, the residents of the other Realms were ... like humans. Short lived, no extraordinary powers, multiple governments and lots of infighting, etc.

But eventually, each Realm reached a point of critical mass, and in the inimitable words of Charles Xavier 'evolution leaped forward'. And not just in the physical sense. Seriously extended lifespans and odd abilities (magic, super strength, etc) were joined (eventually) by more evolved sensibilities as well. The peoples of the Realms united under one government and started working towards a common cause, whatever that was.

The appearance of mutants means that Earth is at the tipping point of that evolutionary leap. Within a thousand years or so, 'normal' humans will no longer exist, and Earth will be united under one government, and have crowned their King. And Frigga and Bestla know it.

They're just keeping their mouths shut because right now is a REALLY bad time to break that sort of news. Once Thanos is dealt with and things calm down, they'll tell (provided one of the Avengers doesn't get irritated enough to try to force them to talk. Which is a real possibility).

Frigga and Bestla are also leery of telling because they know what *can* happen, if the evolving Realm isn't supported and helped as they go through the change.

There are only seven realms with people still on them. Muspelheim and Niffleheim are burnt-out, resourceless wastelands. Because they were the first two Realms to evolve. They had NO IDEA WTF was going on, and they did *not* react well. Ultimately, they wiped themselves out in reaction.

Jotunheim was the third to evolve, and while they learned a little something from their predecessors, enough to keep them from utterly destroying themselves, well ... they still freaked, and the entire reason they eventually started going to war was because their Realm was dying a slow, lingering death.

The Aesir were the fourth to evolve, and the first to do so successfully. When the other Realms reached that evolution point, the Aesir did what they could to help, which resulted in those Realms managing to get through the process in one piece and without destroying their Realms.

There was, after all, a reason the other Realms looked up to Asgard as the overall leader of the Realms. Before Bor and Odin (and probably Bor's dad) got a bit too big for their britches and started being assholes.


	19. Realm Bio: Jotunheim

Realm Bio: Jotunheim

Kingmaker: Casket of Ancient Winters

Power Item: Tesseract

Current Ruler: Rule of the Realm is currently split between Farbauti, Helblindi, and Byleistr. Rule will eventually consolidate under Helblindi.

The Realm

Jotunheim is a very, very cold and inhospitable place. A temperature just below freezing (Earth temperature) is considered an overly warm summer's day. During full winter, the temperature regularly drops below -100 degrees Celcius/-148 degrees Fahrenheit. Blizzards and white-out conditions are pretty much a weekly event, and getting three to four feet of snowfall in a day is incredibly common.

Jotunheim is also a very dark world, under perpetual cloud cover. Even if it wasn't, it is far enough from its sun for the sun to be noticeably dimmer than the suns of other Realms.

Despite being so dark and cold, plants do still grow on Jotunheim. Plant life generally runs to mosses/lichens, mushrooms(which grow in caves protected from the worst of the winds), and a range of deep-tunneling tubers.

Unsurprisingly, the animal life evolved for maximum survivability. While Jotunheim was, at one time, a bit warmer than it has been for the last few millennia, it's always been cold and inhospitable. One of the first ways the animal life evolved to increase the odds of survival was hermaphroditism. This made finding a mate a *lot* easier, as it became as simple as finding the nearest being of your species, rather than having to hunt down a member of your species that was a particular sex. The other way they increased their odds of survival was by all becoming omnivores. Pure herbivores and pure carnivores do not exist on Jotunheim *at all*. Whatever food source presents itself, everyone takes full advantage of.

Unlike on Earth, where most creatures adapt to cold environs by layering on fat, Jotunheim's creatures adapted to the cold in another way. They have what amounts to antifreeze as part of their blood, a compound that keeps their blood and tissues from freezing no matter how low the temperature drops. This has allowed them to live their lives largely unaffected by the cold. Some of the smaller and more delicate animals do hibernate during the worst of the winter, but only a few do that.

Under all the ice (there's miles of it everywhere), Jotunheim is rather like Earth and Vanaheim topographically, with seas and mountains, hills and plains.

The People

Jotuns, like the rest of the lifeforms on their planet, are hermaphrodites. They have no words for 'male' or 'female' in their language, and even back when they had more contact with the other Realms, had an incredibly hard time telling one sex from another in the other Realm residents.

Jotuns have very, very good night vision and heat vision - and are all but blind in the full daylight of other Realms. They are so adapted to the conditions of their own Realm that the other Realms are at best extremely uncomfortable for them, and some areas of some Realms (like the Sahara desert) would be outright lethal to them.

Jotuns are literally born able to defend themselves. Newborns can, if necessary, form a (VERY rough) sharp ice weapon around their hand (or foot, if that's what's being threatened). They can't hold it for long - a matter of a minute or two, but they can do it. They can also instinctively drop the temperature of their skin such that it becomes uncomfortable to touch even for other Jotunheim natives, and outright burns members of other Realms. Again, it doesn't last long, but it's definitely enough to make a potential threat think better of hurting the infant. These abilities refine, and their duration lengthens, as Jotuns get older. By the time they're adults, Jotuns can can make rough but serviceable and quite sturdy ice weapons that extend well beyond their hands, and keep their skins at the especially low temperature for as much as an hour if necessary.

Jotuns age physically at an average of roughly fifty years for every Earth year. Roughly. They age out of their first three years of life at the same rate humans do - their realm is too dangerous for them to remain so small and vulnerable for long. After that, however, they jump to the fifty to one ratio, which means a hundred year old Jotun is about five in Earth terms, physically.

Mental development is a whole other ballgame. Jotuns develop mentally much faster than any of the other long-lived Realm residents. Mentally, they develop and mature at about twice the rate of the others, meaning that same 100 year old Jotun, while being five physically, is closer to ten mentally.

Jotun life expectancy is in the 5-6k range. Unlike most of the other Realm residents, the older a Jotun gets, the stronger their magic becomes. The elders of their race are the ones that built the ice buildings of their cities (now mostly all crumbling ruins).

The unfortunate thing is that, as I mentioned, the Jotuns were the third Realm member to evolve, and while they learned enough from their predecessors not to destroy themselves outright, they still did enough damage to themselves and their realm that Jotunheim is slowly dying.

Food is getting scarcer, lives are getting harder ... they are *dying out*, millimeter by millimeter. It's enough to make anyone cranky. And desperate. Which is how Laufey (and their predecessor) got onto the war track. They needed a new home if they were going to survive. They had, through the Tesseract and the Casket, the ability to MAKE a new world for themselves, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Unfortunately, that just made matters worse.


	20. Realm Bio: Svartalfheim

Realm Bio: Svartalfheim

Kingmaker: Inbarthon, a hammer (Mjolnir bears a close resemblance to it)

Power Item: The Dwarf's Heart, an immense (as in it's several feet long and wide) jewel

Current Ruler: Tharginn, though he considers his wife Aldvi to be his co-ruler

The Realm

Svartalfheim is ... well, truly, ridiculously vertical. It's basically a planet of Himalayas, with a few rare flat spots along the coastline. It does have seas, but the land to water ratio is 70/30 ... in favor of *land*. The mountains do vary in height like the ones on Earth. Some are barely worth the name (all of those are located along the coastlines), while others make Mt. Everest look short. Most of the mountains are fairly steep and rocky, with relatively little in the way of plant life clinging to their surfaces. The valleys are mostly narrow and exist in near-perpetual shadow, getting an hour or two of direct sunlight a day at most due to the mountains around them.

Svartalfheim's gravity is a touch higher than Earth's. Not enough for it to be problematic to other Realm residents, but just enough to be noticeable. The atmosphere is also a touch denser and more oxygen-rich, making it possible for people and animals alike to manage even at the utterly ridiculous heights some of the mountains can reach.

Svartalfheim has a basically Earth-normal range of temperatures and seasons. While there are no deserts, it otherwise has comparable environments, including polar zones. The extremes are a bit more extreme than on Earth because of the heights (and depths) of the planet's topography. The underground cities and dwarf-carved tunnels are temperature regulated to the mid seventies at all times, with only the areas nearest the forges getting warmer than that, and only the mineshafts being cooler.

The plant life is fairly diverse, despite its relative sparsity. The valleys, narrow as they are, tend to serve as the main sources of food and shelter for the animals, as they're covered in shade-loving trees, bushes, and grasses. However, any one valley is very easily overgrazed, so the animals all had to develop ways to get from one valley to the next.

Which means most of Svartalfheim's ground-bound animals would make Earth goats seriously jealous when it comes to their ability to climb. A surprising number of animals have developed wings or faux-wings of varying descriptions (like sugar gliders, here on Earth) that allow them to fly or glide across otherwise impassable chasms and suchlike things.

Svartalfheim's animals tend toward the small to medium size range when compared to Earth animals. The biggest critter on land is roughly the size of a Kodiak bear, and in the seas, the biggest critter is roughly the size of a killer whale.

The People

Ok. Time for me to fess up. I have been (and will continue to) use a LOT of LotR lore when it comes to dwarves. There are differences though.

From the very start, dwarves were ... more in touch with their Realm than the other Realm residents. This is part of why terracing is so limited. Yes, it's difficult and time consuming to terrace, then transport suitable topsoil, then tend the crops, but the dwarves really, really don't like mucking up their Realm.

This attitude is nowhere more prevalent than when it comes to their 'power item'. In all the other Realms, the 'power items' are vouchsafed to a very, very few.

The Dwarf's Heart? Yeah, not so much. When it was found, it was relocated deep underground, in a place only dwarves have ever seen (and they would, to a one, rather die than tell where it is). Thereafter, every dwarf was given the right to visit, and more importantly, to interact with, the Heart. This has in fact become a rite of passage to come of age, though by no means is anyone limited to just the one visit.

At this point, 'The Dwarf's Heart' is ... pretty much literal. If anything ever happens to that jewel or it's removed from Svartalfheim, Svartalfheim and the dwarves are doomed. The other realms would all be ok without their power item. Not happy about losing it *at all*, but ok. The Heart is, at this point, actually sapient after having had untold numbers of dwarves interacting with it, and powers literally all the basic systems the dwarves use to make living underground possible (getting air in and out, regulating the temperature, lighting the place up, etc).

Because the dwarves have been interacting with the Heart since the beginning of their 'evolutionary leap', they have, unlike the others, never lost any knowledge or techniques from that date forward. Which is part of the reason they're more advanced than the others (being the only ones to have a space station, among other things).

It's also affected their evolution to an untold degree. While they do mine for materials, the dwarves have developed methods that make the best of what the other Realms have come up with look positively primeval. The maze of tunnels leading to their cities? Were once active mineshafts, following (exactly) the veins of whatever ore. Once the ore was all gone, the tunnels that remained were transformed into defensive features. The cities themselves are all located in enormous natural caves that were expanded and adjusted as little as could be managed to make them livable. In other words, the dwarves muck with the planet as little as they possibly can in the pursuit of their lives.

Dwarves, like Jotuns, age at about a 50 to 1 rate when compared to human lifespans. Only in their case, just their first year is aged at human speed, rather than the first three years. Not really much of a difference overall, but a bit of one. Also, they mature mentally at roughly the same rate, so that they come to physical and mental maturity at roughly the same time - somewhere around the age of 1100. Like the Jotuns, their lifespan is in the 5-6k range.


	21. Realm Bio: Asgard

Realm Bio: Asgard

Kingmaker: Gungnir

Power Item: Hofund, Heimdall's sword

Current Ruler: Frigga, though eventually it will be Thor and Loki

The Realm

Asgard is, physically speaking, the oldest of the inhabited Realms. It's mostly plains, hills, and low, old mountains similar to the Appalachian Mountains in the USA. It is also remarkably temperate, with little variation from pleasant, mid-70's F weather. Rain is fairly regular and generally in small doses. Winters are generally mild, and things like hurricanes, blizzards, and other extreme forms of weather are all but unknown. This all results in a very green, verdant Realm.

A realm with lots and lots of life forms on it. While they don't have anything the size of an elephant or blue whale, they pretty much have about the same size range on their creatures. Their land to water ratio is also about the same as Earth's

The People

Asgard started out pretty ideal, and stayed that way. Way back before they started their evolutionary leap, Asgardians were ... generally really laid back, with a lot of farmers because Asgard was lousy with places ideal to grow food. They didn't have much in the way of threats, not from the animal life native to their own Realm, and not really from Muspelheim, Niffleheim, and Jotunheim back then, as all three were rather busy either destroying themselves or trying not to and not doing such a good job of it.

Unfortunately, the very ease of their lives allowed Asgardians, even then, to mature at a much slower rate than any other Realms. Even in the here and now, physically, they grow at the 50 to 1 rate their entire lives. They don't have the sped-up year to get through infancy all the others do. And mentally, they mature at about three fourths the rate of everyone else, meaning Asgardians don't really reach mental maturity until they're about 1500 or so - roughly thirty years old in Earth terms. Like the other Realms, their lifespan is in the 5-6k range.

Ironically enough given the subject of my story, it was Thanos that gave Asgard the initial push both into their evolution leap, and into a warrior mindset. Way back then, he wasn't quite as hardcore crazy as he became before he was banished from the six inhabited Realms, but he was still trouble with a capital T. There were a bunch of ... well, scuffles, for lack of a better term ... with him that succeeded in launching Asgard's 'golden age'.

Thanos eventually fucked off for a while (he needed to breed the crazy), and about the same time, the remaining Realms started to tip over into their evolutionary leaps. Asgard, having safely navigated those dangerous waters without destroying others or themselves, lent a hand to the others, enough to keep them stable during the transition without turning them all into Asgard 2.0.

For a long time, things were great. Millennia. Then somewhere along the way, the Asgardian rulers started believing their own hype a bit too much, and Asgard started to become a little snooty ... and to stagnate as they became convinced they were the epitome of what a Realm should be.

Then things got really ugly really quickly. Thanos, with fresh new crazy, came back and tried to kill the Realms. It took all hands on deck and special magic available only to Realm rulers to get him to fuck off again. This happened when Odin was roughly 1k ... about 4k years ago, give or take, and he fought in that war.

Then trouble started up with Jotunheim, as the Jotuns started trying to find an answer to the fact their Realm was dying. Fighting broke out, and an even more militaristic worldview got spawned in Asgard. THEN they started mucking about on Earth, where early humans were all 'wow. You have powers. Are you god?'. This did NOT help the Asgardian superiority complex *at all*, nor did the brief if really ugly Asgard/Jotun war concerning Earth.

In the only bit of defense you'll EVER see me offer for Odin ... the man *has* seen some shit. He fought and played a pivotal role in the Thanos war when he was physically 20 and mentally about sixteen. He was a little kid when Malekith decided to stir up shit on Alfheim and they needed help swatting him, and spent most of his adulthood tangling with Jotuns off and on. He's been in a *lot* of wars, and that messes with a person a little.

He's still an asshole, though. *amused snort*.

The good news is that with a little bit of a swat upside their collective heads, Asgard will be fine. They'll become less insular, less stagnant, and just generally improve.


	22. Realm Bio: Nidavellir

Realm Bio: Nidavellir

Kingmaker: A spear rather like Gungnir, but sized for a Nidavellir

Power Item: A casket

Current Ruler: Bestla. She's grooming one of her grandkids to take the throne when she dies.

The Realm

I took all my inspiration for Nidavellir from the African Savannah. What little research I did into the Realms indicated that there was a species of trolls/giants running around *aside* from the Frost Giants. And when I decided to give them their own realm proper (in place of Helheim), well ... I asked myself what the hell sort of Realm would bring people that big to dominance. The answer was 'somewhere where *everything* is damn big'. The following question was 'what sort of realm would allow for life forms that big' which was answered by 'somewhere with a lot of room to move. Not so many trees to run into. Probably not a lot in the way of mountains ... so ... yeah'.

African Savannah it was.

In that wise. Nidavellir is remarkably flat. They do have mountains, but the way England has mountains, which is to say, really damn short (3k tall or so), and not a whole lot of them either. There are plenty of low, rolling hills in some areas, but other than that? Flat as hell, relatively speaking.

The temperatures are about the same as in the African Savannah. Roughly sixty to ninety degrees F range most of the year and dropping to only a little above freezing in winter. Nidavellir does, however, get rain on a fairly regular schedule year round. There is no dry season, and droughts are very rare.

There are trees, but they tend to be scattered around singly, following a riverbed, or in the occasional little copse here and there. There are more bushes than trees, squat things (that most humans would think of as trees because squat to a Nidavellir is TALL to a human) scattered all over. But by far the predominant plant life is a nearly infinite variety of grasses.

Last but not least? The wildlife is mostly fucking HUGE. The rhino-alikes? Are basically the warthogs of Nidavellir, size-wise. The Bilgesnipe are the wildebeest/zebra, size wise. And yes, there is such thing as the Nidavellir equivalent to an elephant and giraffe, size wise.

And predators to match. Y'all met the realm's version of a cheetah (the lean thing Steve spotted chasing another lean thing, which was the Nidavellir equivalent to a Thompson's Gazelle), and their version of the African Wild Dog, which can and will hunt wildebeest and zebras (aka Bilgesnipe) but focuses more on smaller game, which includes warthogs, aka the rhino-alikes.

Yes, the 'saber tooth cat' is a SMALL predator, folks. There is much, much bigger out there. And the water is absolutely no safer. While the size range isn't quite as ridiculous in the water as it is on land, they do have stuff bigger than blue whales. And *none* of their water animals eat the equivalent to krill and thus swim around straining water for their food.

The thing that will drive Earth biologists, ecologists, and a lot of other -ists absolutely bugfuck nuts is the fact that Nidavellir doesn't have insects. At all. What they do have is a range of small mammalian burrowers who fulfill the necessary functions that insects do.

This means that, yes, Nidavellir plant life is fertilized *underground*. And it's the primary reason you only see one grass type in a given chunk of land, as the 'root ball' slowly expands as it gets fertilized, sending new shoots upwards at the outer edges of the ball. As a result, the grasses can't intermingle the way they do on Earth (with short-stemmed grasses growing in amongst long-stemmed ones etc). 

The People

Keeping with the African Savannah theme, I decided that, by and large, the Nidavellir led tribal, nomadic lives.

While they're not quite as close to their realm as the dwarves, they aren't too far from it, choosing to live as harmoniously with their Realm as they can. They have the capacity for a much higher level of 'tech' than they use, they just don't choose to use it.

Like the other Realms, they have a 5-6k lifespan, and a 50 to 1 aging ratio compared to Earth. They split the difference between Jotuns and dwarves, spending two years on a sped-up aging track - long enough to be able to walk/run to at least some level of competence even if they aren't perfectly steady yet, before slowing down to the 50 to 1 ratio. Mentally, they age at the 50 to 1 ratio, reaching mental maturity at somewhere around 1100 years old, as with dwarves.

They are the least magical of the Realm residents, after Asgardians, and unlike the other Realms, they ... have very little care for their kingmaker and power item. Both are stored in the capital city. The power item hasn't been used since the Thanos war, and the kingmaker only gets pulled out of storage when a new ruler needs to be crowned after the old one dies or abdicates due to ill health or failing mental faculties. That's why neither item has a name. The Nidavellir never bothered to give them one. The kingship itself is ... rather loosely observed, given their nomadic nature, and verges on being symbolic. The only reason they keep one (and make sure they're of the original royal line) is because the position *does* come with magic and abilities that no other Nidavellir has, and those abilities have occasionally been needed.

They are very isolationist, but this has more to do with size and strength difficulties than them being snooty and superior. They are taller than even Jotuns (who can reach as much as ten feet tall), and far, far stronger than even the strongest member of any other Realm. Which generally means most buildings on other Realms aren't built to accommodate their height, and most materials can't withstand their strength and tend to get broken. Rather than run around causing lots of damage, even if accidentally, the Nidavellir decided to stick close to home.


	23. Realm Bio: Vanaheim

Realm Bio: Vanaheim

Kingmaker: Eldregost, a sword

Power Item: Valhost, a large crystal-and-metal plinth

Current Ruler: Palthor, Frigga's eldest brother

The Realm

Vanaheim is the Realm most like Earth in all respects. It has all the same forms of weather, all the same sorts of topography, all the same sorts of ecosystems. It even has a moon, which none of the other Realms have.

Its people are the most like those of Earth as well, with a far more marked variety of skin, hair and eye colors than is generally seen in the other Realms. They even have ethnic types - both Frigga and Hogun are Vanir natives. Ditto on languages, the only Realm to have more than one native language after their evolutionary leap, at least until Earth finishes its leap.

Vanaheim, unlike the other Realms, has a periodic problem from off-planet. You see, though no one knows this for sure, the galaxy Vanaheim inhabits is home to what Earth would call dragons. They are native to a planet on the far side of the galaxy from Vanaheim, and come in a variety of forms - one of which is a close cousin to the flying space whales of the Chitauri army. Every now and again, one of these dragons would come bother Vanaheim (or, much more rarely, one of the other Realms). Some of them are easier to roust than others.

The dragons aside, the Realm is pretty peaceful and prosperous. While the variety of weather and ecosystems ensures that not everywhere is suitable for growing food, starvation is completely unknown. As with Earth, the plant and animal life runs the gamut of sizes.

Vanir's power item is unusual in that rather like Earth's power item, it was found well before Vanir's evolutionary leap. Mostly because it was kind of hard to *miss*, being about fifty feet tall of pure white crystal. Shortly after it was found, the Vanir of the day got the bright idea to ... well, pretty it up. Which is how the metal got involved. Most of the metal used was the Vanir version of bronze, which was later replaced with something a bit sturdier and less likely to rust and damage the crystal. Over time, bits of a number of metals were added to the 'decoration, and about the time of their evolutionary leap, the metal wreathing had been worked into something that was functional as well as pretty, in that it helped to protect the crystal. Later, an extremely sturdy structure was built around the crystal, which is how things stayed for a few millennia before the Vanir figured out how to get the crystal out of the ground safely. At that point, it was moved deep underground, rather like the Dwarf's Heart, but no one interacts with it unless its power is needed to protect the Realm. When it was moved, the metal cladding was allowed to stay in place, as it was a master work in its own right, and part of their Realm's history.

The People

While the similarities between humans and Vanir are completely accidental ... well, they're there. The Vanir are the most like us of any of the other Realms. They run a little bit taller than us, in the six to seven foot range, rather than the five to six. There are also fewer ethic types - they only have a Caucasian-looking ethnic group, and an Asiatic-looking ethnic group. Their skin colors do, however, run the full gamut of those seen on Earth, and all skin colors can be found in both ethnic groups. Same goes for hair and eye colors. No one combination of characteristics is significantly more common than the others, with everything split remarkably close to fifty/fifty.

Vanaheim also has more than one native language, like Earth and unlike the other Realms. That said, they don't have umpity billion and three languages, dialects, sub-dialects, and so forth. They have four languages, one each that developed on their four continents (they're the only other Realm to have more than one habitable continent, too). Each language does have a few dialects, but none of the dialects are so differentiated from the others as to require more than a careful ear to catch differences in vowel sounds and syllable stresses.

As befits such a relatively diverse Realm, their society and way of life is more diverse than anywhere other than Earth. Gender-specific roles do exist, but tolerance for eschewing those roles is more prevalent than anywhere except Svartalfheim (which only barely has gender specific roles to start with, and then only because of the strength difference between the sexes). They are, as a people, far, FAR more tolerant and accepting of magical abilities than Asgardians.

Probably because more of them have magic to begin with, and overall their magical population is stronger than those Asgard produces. And mages come in *real* handy when it comes to chasing off dragons without a shit-ton of people getting killed. All that said, Frigga is, in Vanir terms, freakishly strong magically, being on par with an elf. She's not the first Vanir to be so magically strong, but such people are incredibly rare, with perhaps one born every three generations or so (once every fifteen thousand years).

Mentally and physically, they age at the same rate as the Dwarves - that is, they have a 50 to 1 ratio for both physical and mental maturity, finishing both at around 1100 years of age, and they spend the first year of their lives aging at human-normal speeds. Like the other Realms, their life expectancy is in the 5-6k range.


	24. Character Bio: Jane Foster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll do Alfheim's bio after the place is visited. I don't want to ruin the fun.

Character Bio: Jane Foster

Age: Jane is 27

Ok, folks. Jane is pretty much solely movie and headcanon. For the very simple reason that the comics and cartoon canon has her as being a nurse, which ... yeah. No.

So. Jane.

She is an only child, and in the top ten smartest humans on Earth, right in there with Tony and Peter and Bruce. 

Unfortunately for her, she's pretty much always had a reputation as a bit of an oddball. She was that kid who could spout random facts about things - in her case, celestial bodies - verbatim, and ad nauseum. She much preferred to stargaze than hang out with her agemates or play. It really didn't help that she was bright enough to skip grades, and did, which meant she was a year or more younger than all her classmates. The fact she consistently had to be reminded to do things like eat and sleep rather than stay eyeball deep in science didn't help either.

Unlike a lot of geeks, though, and despite being on the small and skinny side, Jane didn't put up with being bullied. Rather like a certain other skinny shrimp with a thing about bullies.

Jane shares another characteristic with Steve. She has zero sense of self preservation, as witnessed by her willingness to go *into* a rather spectacular sandstorm and possible weird-ass celestial event of unknown type.

Ditto running *towards* the Destroyer and backtalking Coulson. And pretty much everything else she did during that whole adventure. And even if they aren't canon for this story, slapping Loki and that whole Convergence mess.

At any rate, she eventually went to Culver for college. Because she graduated high school early, she started college at seventeen, and was attending Culver at the time of Bruce's accident. Much to her disappointment, that happened during the summer break, when she wasn't present, so she missed the excitement.

Like I said, no sense of self preservation.

She soon became known as the very brilliant but slightly kooky rising star of astrophysics. Then, a couple years before things got ... interesting ... she latched onto Einstein Rosen bridges and her reputation went from 'kooky' to a far less complimentary 'just shy of batshit'.

Which is where things were when she headed out to New Mexico and proceeded to get the most graphic proof ever that not only was she not crazy, but she was more right than even she had dared to hope at some points in her search for proof of Einstein Rosen bridges.

She has a list of people to rub that in to that's longer than she is tall.

Thor will be only too glad to help her with that.

Hiring Darcy on as her intern proved to be one of those really serendipitous circumstances. Despite the fact that what Darcy knows about astrophysics fitting in a thimble, the two women get on like a house on fire, and Darcy is one of the few people her age that Jane actively considers a friend.

Most people, on first meeting Jane, dismiss her as the typical airhead, soft-spoken, defenseless geek. Such people tend to get the shock of their lives pretty quick. Jane is fearless, outspoken, and has quite the temper. When she's caffeine and food deprived (which were frighteningly common states pre-Darcy) she could rival Hulk for sheer pissiness and destructive tendencies.

Jane is a little on the awkward side with people, like a lot of geniuses. She's better than some, but thanks to a marked lack of friends growing up and a disinterest in socializing, she tends to get flustered in social situations. She was as surprised as anyone by her near-instant attraction to Thor. Sure, the first half day or so had been all about who he was and where he'd come from and how he'd gotten there, but ... yeah. She started falling for him pretty quick.

After he disappeared, she even started wondering why she'd latched onto him so fast. He was basically a jock after all. Big, strong and ...

And not dumb. Oh, he hadn't had a clue about much of anything to do with Earth, but get him going about his home or the other Realms and, well. A lot smarter than he looked, that was for sure. Jane had always liked her men pretty, but until Thor, the pretty ones had either been dumb as posts or had turned out to be mean bastards. Thor had been neither.

While she could have done without the year of complete silence, at this point she figures it's all worked out for the best. Thor is back, and better, she now gets to collaborate with Bruce and Tony and Loki and that is ... really freaking fantastic as far as she's concerned.


	25. Character Bio: Darcy Lewis

Character Bio: Darcy Lewis

Age: Darcy is 24

Darcy is purely movie and headcanon, as she apparently didn't exist prior to the movies.

Darcy is an only child, but her family is quite extensive, with several aunts and uncles and a plethora of cousins. They lived close enough to each other that Darcy's most frequent playmates were her cousins - who were all boys.

Darcy was a die-hard tomboy, though, so that worked out. She wrestled and climbed and basically did everything her cousins did and paid little attention to 'girly' things.

Then puberty hit, and Darcy went from a fairly androgynous body to having the sort of curves that would have made Rita Hayworth jealous. Her cousins got very weird with her very quickly.

Other boys got even weirder. Darcy didn't know what to do with the attention her newly curvy body got her, and vacillated between hiding under chunky sweaters and sweats and wearing things that took advantage of what she had to work with.

Then, in her sophomore year, a guy she'd liked and had been seriously considering dating came to within a whisker of sexually assaulting and very probably outright raping her.

After Darcy got done freaking right the hell out about that, she got pissed off, and the sassy, take-no-shit Darcy was born. She invested in a taser - and to hell with whether or not it was illegal, she had a fucking right to protect herself, you assholes - and learned to wear ass-kicker boots metaphorically and literally.

Still, the whole thing kind of derailed her a little, and when it came time for college, she didn't really know what to do with herself. She kept switching majors and dropping classes as they proved not to be what she thought, or started boring her to death.

Then she signed on as Jane's intern.

That had been fun. For such a tiny thing, Jane was a spitfire. And a bit Jekyll and Hyde-ish sometimes. Particularly under the influence of the unholy trio of not enough sleep, not enough food, and not enough caffeine. One close encounter with THAT beast and Darcy learned her lesson.

Outside of those issues, Jane proved to basically be Darcy's sister from another mister. She was all sassy, and take-no-shit. And it turned out that Darcy had an unexpected talent for cat-herding.

That last one? Paid unexpected dividends with more than just making sure Jane remembered to eat and sleep. Especially post Thor and SAMIT, when things got a little on the crazy side, and SHIELD folks popped up every now and again.

She's still trying to get a handle on how crazy things have gotten in the last month. Thor being back was aces. Getting to hang out with a ton of really very hot guys? Not exactly a trial. Having to cat-herd on a Master level? Unexpectedly fun.

Bitching out the King of Asgard? Terrifying, but totally necessary. Because seriously, what the fuck. She is never not going to get over that guy's douchebaggery. It's a wonder Loki didn't lose his shit and start killing everyone in sight long before the coronation thing went awry.

Discovering that she is *totally on board* with shooting people in the face for fucking around with any of the bunch of crazies she's found herself mother henning? That one's taking some getting used to. Tasing handsy or overly aggressive assholes was one thing, and a thing she was totally comfortable with doing at the drop of a hat. Wanting to shoot someone in the face after five seconds of dealing with Steve after the whole Bucky reveal, or on the days Loki is having a hard time and trying to hide it, that's kind of new.

For that matter, so is the whole turning into Nana thing. Feeding Jane? Totally necessary to life and limb. Feeding everyone else because the shit has hit the fan and for god's sake, will you people eat, you can't neglect basic nutrition! in fine Nana-in-crisis-mode style was totally weird.

But for all the weird, she is definitely sticking this out. Even if there wasn't the uber baddy coming to town thing, she'd stick around. Because as crazy and weird as this whole mess has been, it's also been fun as hell.


	26. Realm Bio: Alfheim

Realm Bio: Alfheim

Kingmaker: Naihmenar, a short spear (Tony mistakes it for a pimp cane)

Power Item: Grenlath, a gem much like the Dwarf's Heart.

Current Ruler: Salar

The Realm

Alfheim is, by far, the most *green* of the Realms. Most of it is covered by enormous forests, filled with trees. There are actually trees there from all the currently populated Realms save Jotunheim (which doesn't have trees at all), some of which are now extinct on their home Realms, that are kept in enormous, carefully tended greenhouses.

Alfheim is largely temperate, like Asgard, with little in the way of extremes in weather, and little variance from 'pleasantly warm' temperatures.

Well, the *inhabited* portions of Alfheim are like this. Their 'main' continent. They have a second continent which is now largely a wasteland, more or less glassed by an enormous magical battle - the last their people had before they fully unified. The magical residue is such that even millions of years later, nothing grows there. Outsiders are forbidden from going anywhere near that continent.

Fortunately for them, their remaining continent is quite large, the size of Asia, Europe and Africa combined. While treeless plains are distinctly lacking, it otherwise has most of the topographical features familiar to Earth.

The People

The first thing you need to know about the elves is that unlike the other Realms, they are not, actually, one race with two ethnic types. They are actually two distinct subspecies. To put it in perspective, this isn't a Chinese man living next door to a black man living next door to a Caucasian. This is a Neanderthal living next to a Homo Sapiens.

The breakdown goes thusly.

Light Elves

Generally in the 6 1/2 to 7 1/2 foot tall range. Pure white (not an indicator of age), blonde, red or light brown hair. Sharply defined features (what we commonly call aristocratic features) and small ears with swept-back points. Blue and green eyes predominate, with the VERY rare hazel cropping up here and there. Skin color ranges from pure, literal white to that really pale, fair color redheads get that sunburns in three seconds flat.

Dark Elves

Generally in the 6 - 7 foot tall range. Pure black, mid or dark brown hair. Slightly square, coarse features and mid-size ears with points that stick straight up. Black and brown eyes predominate, with hazel, again very rare, popping up here and there. Their skin ranges from literal, pitch black to all the varying shades of dark and mid brown found in humans.

For pretty much their entire history, the two groups DID NOT LIKE each other. While interbreeding was (and is) possible, it's been taboo for so long (since long before unification) that only small indicators of past interbreeding remain - mostly the hazel eyes and mid-brown hair colors, which can get to 'splitting hair's levels of whether they're light brown (an 'accepted', 'normal' color for Light Elves) or mid, which more properly belongs in the Dark Elf line. There might have been more, but anyone with blatantly obvious mixed genes (like, say, having white hair and black skin) didn't survive to breed and continue the trend.

The Asgard really had their work cut out for them getting the two groups through their evolutionary leap without killing themselves or their Realm, but they managed it (barely). 

In truth, to this day, the elves are only barely unified enough to qualify for the Kingmaker to be around. Their entire society is basically divided in half, with all the fighting and grunt-work related jobs being Dark Elf domain, and the more cerebral and managerial jobs being Light Elf domain. The two sides have to cooperate to get all the stuff necessary to society done, but they rarely have anything to do with each other in their personal lives.

Aside from that, their pride and joy is their magic.

All the Realms have some degree of magic, but to put it in perspective:

Midgard currently is all over the place and can't be properly judged yet

Asgard is basically the ninety-pound asthmatic magically speaking

Nidavellir is the *healthy* ninety pounder

Vanaheim is your basic, competent athlete, with the occasional Olympic quality athlete, and the even rarer medal winner

Jotunheim is mostly competent athletes, with more Olympic quality ones and medal winners than Vanaheim

Svartalfheim is mostly Olympic quality athletes, with plenty of medal winners in the mix

Alfheim is pretty much all gold and silver medal winning Olympic athletes. And they know it. And tend to lord it over everyone else.

For all their magical superiority, they have the same lifespan range and aging ratio - that is, 5-6k and 50 to 1, with their first two years of life spent aging at human speeds.


	27. Nicknames

Nicknames

This being a story with Tony Stark in it, there are a lot of nicknames running around. Someone asked for a rundown, and it makes sense, so here we go. Unless otherwise indicated, all nicknames are Tony-generated and used. Some may not have been seen in-fic yet, but might come up later, so I'm including them. I may have forgotten some, so there may be additions later.

Steve: Cap, Capsicle, Rocket Pop, Captain Righteous, Rip Van Winkle, Sleepy

Bruce: Jolly Green, Green Giant, Brucie, Bruciekins

Thor: Point Break, Fabio

Clint: Legolas, Robin Hood, Merida, Katniss

Natasha: Nat (Clint and Phil)

Phil: Agent, SAMIT (Darcy)

Logan: Claws (Hulk. Likely to be taken up by Tony, though), Growly, Gruff'n'Growly

Charles: Wheels (Logan) Prof/Professor X (most of the kids at the mansion)

Fury: Literally anything insulting Tony can come up with. He rarely uses the same one twice.

Warren: Wings, Tweety

Rhodey: Rhodey, a variety of sweets-based nicknames (like Sugarplum)

Pepper: Pepper, Pep, and like Rhodey, a variety of sweets-based names.

Hank McCoy: Cookie Monster (Bobby, very rarely these days), Big Blue

Ororo: Ro (mostly used by Scott, Jean, and Hank. Bobby's started using it occasionally as well)

Scott: One-eye

Darcy: Sparky

Jarvis: J, Jarv, and when they're alone and Tony is trying to sweet talk him into/thanking him for doing something less than legal 'Daddy's favorite ____' where the blank is filled in with something related to the task

Remy: Cajun, Brat

Kurt: Blue Devil, Stinker

Loki: Rudolph, Reindeer Games, Rock of Ages, Loki-dokes, Lokester


	28. Realm Bio: Muspelheim and Niffleheim

Realm Bio: Muspelheim and Niffleheim

Muspelheim and Niffleheim are both, currently, dead worlds, their people long gone. That said, a brief overview of what they *were* is worth the time, because not *everything* from both realms died with the realms.

The two worlds are as different as it's possible to get, back in their heyday. Muspelheim was an extremely volcanic world - fire and lava were everywhere. There was very little in the way of green and growing things, yet somehow, life was spawned there.

Muspelheim was the first Realm (though the others have no way of knowing this) to hit their evolutionary leap, and it was *not* pretty. The freakout got to enough of a level that they literally tore their world in half. They and their world died before Earth was more than a volcanic wasteland with no perceptible life forms of its own yet.

But not everything died with the world. See, the 'paths between worlds' that Loki can travel? They existed even back then, and animals traveling those paths, whether accidentally or on purpose, happens even today. That's how Thor knows about Bilgesnipe. The things sometimes manage to escape Nidavellir and cause havok elsewhere.

Some of the creatures of Muspelheim managed to escape. Phoenixes, hellhounds, salamanders and efreets are all either Muspelheim creatures or exaggerations of Muspelheim creatures as told to humans by other Realm travelers. Each of the four have enough of a breeding population to still exist on one or more Realms. There were others, but all of them eventually died out as not enough of them escaped to form a breeding population that wouldn't eventually die out thanks to inbreeding.

Niffleheim, on the other hand, was a water world. Its largest landmass was the size of Australia. The rest of the planet was dotted with little islands in an enormous ocean with equally enormous lifeforms. Their freakout was every bit as bad as the Muspelheim one, though they managed to not rip their world in half. They just eventually boiled their ocean into nonexistence and literally cooked themselves in the process. This happened right about the time dinosaurs ruled the Earth.

Some of the animals, like with Muspelheim, managed to travel to other worlds. Most of the critters in mythology (that aren't part-human) that hang out in water? Niffleheim natives or exaggerations thereof.

Because there's so much water on the other Realms, compared to really super-hot places or volcanoes, a LOT more of the Niffleheim wildlife survived than the Muspelheim ones. There are breeding populations of at least three Niffleheim species on EVERY existing Realm.


	29. Character Bio: Betty Ross

Character Bio: Betty Ross

Age: Betty is 35

Betty is a mix of all three types of headcanon. Her entire background pre-Bruce is cartoon/comics compliant, with the Bruce and post-Bruce portions movie and headcanon.

Betty's life started out nice enough. She was an Army brat, which meant a lot of moving and not necessarily knowing if her dad would come home alive or not, but otherwise it was good.

Then her mother died when Betty was in her teens, and Thaddeus Ross started losing his damn mind. To be utterly fair, losing a beloved spouse can and does hit people hard, but ... yeah. Thaddeus went *completely* off the rails eventually. The worst part is that it all had its roots in what, in sane moderation, any good father would do. Protect their kid.

Unfortunately, Thaddeus was a little loony, so he expressed this in some really fucked-up ways. Like banishing Betty to private schools. Because if she wasn't around him much, she wouldn't be as attached to him, and when the inevitable happened, it wouldn't hurt her as much.

Ditto his dislike of Bruce from the get-go. Bruce, pre-Hulk, was quiet, shy, and conflict avoidant. Not, to Thaddeus' mind, a suitable *protector* for his daughter.

Betty couldn't possibly have cared less.

She fell head over heels for Bruce (and vice versa, though he was a LOT slower in saying or doing anything about it) the instant they clapped eyes on each other. They, in point of fact, come as close to being soulmates as you can get without actually invoking that trope. The fact Hulk recognized her (even if he didn't know her name) from the beginning, and that he point blank refuses to risk hurting her, reverting to Banner the minute she shows up unless there's an active threat, and then god help your ass because he WILL NOT STOP until she's safe - that's really all you need to know.

The thing about Betty is ... she is quiet and sweet and gentle as can be. Hands down the biggest of those three of any of the women in the story. And a lot ... a LOT of people (especially her father) make the mistake of thinking that because of that, Betty is a submissive doormat.

Bwahahaha. Nothing could be further from the truth. Betty is every bit as hardcore as the other ladies. She will NOT hesitate to fuck your shit up if you mess with her, or, god help you, Bruce. But unlike the other ladies, she believes in killing with kindness until it becomes clear that won't work. That sweet, soft, gentle voice of hers can and does talk people into being sensible quite a bit, often without people quite realizing what she's doing and what they're agreeing to.

The number of arguments she had with Thaddeus even before the accident, over her dating Bruce, really should have seen Thaddeus buying a clue that Betty was a whole heck of a lot more stubborn and determined than he gave her credit for, but like I said earlier, he was quickly going batshit insane, so ... he didn't pick up on it.

She actually punched him a few times over the years, over his hunting Bruce. And she tried, repeatedly, to get him derailed through proper channels. Unfortunately, in a contest between the word of a civilian scientist against that of an Army general, the general is going to win when addressing military brass.

You all don't EVEN want to know what she did and said when Thaddeus frog-marched her to Cheyenne Mountain after the Harlem incident. Seriously. That got incredibly ugly incredibly quickly.


	30. Character List

Characters in DD

Ones With Character Bios

Tony Stark  
Steve Rogers  
Bruce Banner  
Natasha Romanov  
Clint Barton  
Thor  
Loki  
Phil Coulson  
Pepper Potts  
Betty Ross  
Jane Foster  
Darcy Lewis  
Logan  
Remy LeBeau  
Bobby Drake  
Rogue  
John Allerdyce  
Charles Xavier

Ones with no Character Bio YET

Kurt Wagner  
Hank McCoy  
Cecelia Reyes  
Warren Worthington III  
Jean Grey  
Scott Summers  
Ororo Munroe  
Thaddeus Ross  
Nick Fury  
Peter Parker  
May Parker  
Frigga  
Tyr  
Farbauti  
Helblindi  
Byleistr  
Bestla  
Salar  
Tharginn  
Sam Wilson  
Jarvis  
Odin  
James Rhodes  
Sif  
Bucky Barnes  
Yelena Belova  
Roberto da Costa

Characters mentioned, who have not yet been seen but will be, no Character Bios YET

Thanos  
Magneto  
Mystique  
T'challa  
Pete Wisdom  
The Other  
Betsy Braddock  
Sean Cassidy  
Jean-Paul Beaubier  
Carol Danvers  
Sam Guthrie  
John Proudstar  
Shiro Yoshida  
Pietro Maximoff  
Wanda Maximoff  
Lorna Dane  
Hogun  
Fandral  
Volstagg


	31. Character Bio: Erik Lensherr

Character Bio: Erik Lensherr aka Magneto

Age: Erik is 77

Mags is ... a weird mishmash of canons, so bear with me here.

He was born and raised in Germany, initially. Born to devout Jewish parents. He was, himself, a devout Jew.

Until disaster struck in the form of Hitler.

Erik and his parents managed to evade getting shipped to a concentration camp until early in '44, only a few weeks after Steve went down in the ice. The Nazis took Steve's loss as a sign they'd win and stepped up their campaign at that point. The Lensherrs, who had succeeded in keeping their heads down and/or hiding as necessary until then, got caught up in the first big sweep after Steve went down.

Erik was separated from his family for reasons he never discovered. He reacted ... well, extremely badly to this, as seen in X 1. He never saw his parents again, and was never able to find out when, and how, they died. Or where they'd been buried - or even *if* they'd been buried.

The soldiers, understandably a bit freaked out by what Erik had done, segregated him. They were bright enough to house him in a concrete bunker with minimal metal present. Shortly after that, the Nazi answer to Arnim Zola arranged for Erik to be transferred to a ... special ... unit. The less said about what was done to him there, the better. Just suffice it to say, it was not fun. At all. And back then, Erik didn't have any control, so escape proved impossible for a bit.

But after a couple months, Erik managed to get just enough control, for just long enough, to escape, and ran for it. He spent the next two years hiding, even after news reached him that the war was over and the camps emptied. He was *way* too freaked out to want to risk someone *else* finding out about the metal control and doing to him what the Nazis had. He didn't know it at the time, but the fear was definitely justified. Let's just all be extremely grateful that Hydra never got their hands on him, because that would have been just plain *ugly*. Seriously, the thought of Mags as, say, the Winter Soldier gives me the heebeejeebees.

Right about the time Erik started risking rejoining civilization, he and Charles met. By the time Erik was in his very late teens, he was doing better ... ish in regards to the trauma he had suffered. In that he no longer felt compelled to hide from the rest of civilization, and wasn't quite as jumpy as he'd been. He was, however, still very paranoid and twitchy. Really, the only reason Charles got anywhere with Erik initially was thanks to his telepathy. It gave Charles what he needed to soothe the worst of Erik's fears and allowed friendship (and more) to be possible. To give Charles some credit - he did Erik a lot of good. Despite their philosophical differences, Charles' calm, easygoing personality provided something of a rock and safe place for Erik to stand on. It gave Erik a chance to ... process ... some of his trauma. Which in turn lessened the chances of him going into a world-destroying rage.

The whole 'oh, hey, I like guys' thing ... really, really, REALLY didn't go over all that well with Erik for a very long time though. It was wrong and bad and ... yeah. All that nonsense that is commonplace even today. He had a bad habit of, every time he and Charles parted ways for a while (because Erik occasionally got fed up with Charles' self-righteous preaching), finding the first woman he could to prove he was actually heterosexual, thank you very kindly.

That's how he ended up with three kids. Whatever other faults Erik has (and there's kind of a lot of faults) he's made *damn* sure his kids have the money they need growing up ... and god help anyone stupid enough to lay a finger on any of them. That will get incredibly ugly incredibly quickly. When all three proved to be mutants, Erik was self-aware enough of his own problems to send them to Charles, so they didn't get their heads full of his mess, and when he finally did go off the rails, he refused to drag them with him.

Eventually, he got to an age or cynicism level where he decided 'fuck it, I'ma do what I want' and stopped freaking out about liking men. Unfortunately, that 'I do what I want' sort of thinking didn't confine itself to his sexual preference. Erik had been balanced on the knife edge between bad guy and good guy for a long time, held there by god alone knows what. What, precisely, tipped him into 'bad guy' territory is anyone's guess. He threw a few fits prior to the Liberty Island incident, but nothing big. That incident was his first 'go big or go home' try.

But for all he went off the rails, Erik is not completely out of control. SHIELD did their best to keep metal away from him in that plastic cage, but ... yeah. It takes a lot more than a plastic cage with no metal allowed within a few hundred yards to completely cut him off from his mutation, and with it, a means of escape. But Mags is not yet to the point where he's ok with a shitload of collateral deaths. He didn't know the machine would kill people, and wasn't willing to believe the X-Men when they told him the Senator had died, because c'mon. In their place, he'dve said anything he thought would get them to stop. He's still not entirely sure he believes them, because of that.

At any rate ... getting out of his cell would necessitate a *lot* of innocents dying and getting hurt. Because his jailers wouldn't take an escape attempt lying down, and Erik figures they've got non metal weapons on standby just for him, which means he wouldn't be able to shut the fight down that way. Which would mean flinging a lot of metal around, and that would mean innocent civilians getting hurt and killed. So he's stayed put.

Erik is, of everyone on Earth, truly the most like Loki in pretty much every way. Damaged beyond the telling of it, charming and charismatic as all hell, a gifted orator capable of talking people into or out of just about anything, very intelligent, a more than capable tactician, and with a distinctly wonky moral compass than can, and has, teetered between 'good' and 'evil'.


	32. Character Bio: Kurt Wagner

Character Bio: Kurt Wagner

Age: Kurt is 24

Kurt is one of the other extremely few characters in this fic I have a *definite* mental picture of that might clash with that of some of my readers. Kurt does NOT have the scars all over his body that movie Kurt did. In point of fact, Kurt is not movie compliant at all, because X 2 made it clear he hadn't been an X-Man before that movie, where DD's Kurt has been an X-Man for a few years. He's strictly comics/cartoon and headcanons.

Kurt is the son of Mystique and Azazel. He does not know this, and is unlikely to find out, as Azazel is who knows where and Mystique has run across Kurt once or twice and is keeping her mouth shut. Charles probably knows, but is likewise keeping his yap shut.

As a side note? Azazel is *just* a mutant, and one of the few older ones (as in, he's in his forties or fifties). He's not a demonic being or anything of the sort. Because I point blank refuse to go there. Marvel tends to get a little crazy sometimes. This is one of those times.

At any rate, Kurt was born in Germany. When Kurt was a very young baby (like, maybe a month old at the time), Mystique and Azazel got discovered by some locals who promptly freaked the fuck out at the 'devil' and the blue-scaled 'demoness'. They split up, with Mystique taking Kurt. Unfortunately, the locals got a proper hunting party put together and didn't stop going after the two of them. Mystique, who had been a reluctant mom to begin with, was more interested in saving her own skin than being a mother, and left Kurt with a gypsy friend of Azazel's and never looked back.

In the end, it was for the best. Margali, the gypsy friend, raised Kurt like he was her own son, and in the circus Margali worked for, Kurt never had to face prejudice and fear. He even had a brother and sister, Margali's two natural children.

His rather extreme flexibility and gymnastic capabilities were discovered when he was pretty young, and it wasn't long until he became a cornerstone act for the circus. He got a big kick out of this, and adored playing for crowds.

He came to Charles' attention completely by accident. Charles and Scott had traveled to the European continent at Pete Wisdom's behest over a completely separate mutant-related matter. Kurt's circus happened to be in town at the time, and Scott got the short hairs scared off him when Kurt 'bamfed' into existence near him while playing a game with some of the younger kids of the circus workers one evening.

It took nearly a year of convincing, even with Kurt having begun to get a little restless with the circus life, but eventually Kurt left the circus to put his skills to use on a much, much bigger stage.

In one of those ironies of life, the guy that looks like a blue-skinned devil became (and remains) a very devout Roman Catholic - one of the few characters in the story to be truly religious. He is, thankfully, not one to proselytize. If people express interest, he won't hesitate to talk to them about his faith, and he doesn't hide that he prays/does penance etc, but he is of the firm belief that people have to *want* a religion - any religion - for conversion to even be considered. Preaching at random people who aren't interested is sort of silly, in his books.

Kurt is an inherent optimist and has a very bubbly, playful personality. He's more than a bit of a showoff, and won't hesitate to entertain kids and adults alike with various antics and stunts he did in the circus or that he makes up on the fly. It's pretty difficult to put him in a bad mood, and even harder to keep him there for long. He adores kids of all ages, and can usually be found hanging out with them at the mansion, rather than the adults.

Well, except for Ororo. He has a planet-sized crush on her, and any excuse to hang out in her vicinity, he takes. Whether anything will ever come of that is anyone's guess, though it provides no small amount of amusement to those in the know ... primarily because Ororo is completely clueless.

But for all that ... Kurt is, perhaps, one of the more ruthless and capable X-Men when it comes to combat. He refuses to kill if there's any other choice (alien invasions being one of those times when there isn't), but he is not shy about scaring the ever loving shit out of an opponent by teleporting high up, letting them go, and then teleporting away only to catch them before they hit the ground and repeating the process as many times as necessary (usually once is enough). 

He is also an expert swordsman and uses swords to devastating effect in a fight. He's one of a very small number of people who have the knowledge and ability to go toe-to-toe with Deadpool in a short fight. Because Kurt doesn't have a healing factor, he doesn't have Deadpool's stamina and can't fight for ridiculously long periods without his abilities going to hell thanks to fatigue.

He is adept at combining extremely short-range (meaning within a twenty foot circle), extremely fast (meaning teleporting as often as every second) teleportation and hand-to-hand fighting. The combination makes him *extremely* hard to defeat unless you've got some way of knowing where he's going to teleport to next, or a way to stop him from teleporting.

In short, Kurt is one of the last X-Men you want to piss off, because he will twist you into knots and make you cry for your mommy *real* quick.

To satisfy everyone's curiosity as to where the heck he was during the events of X1, he was in Germany, visiting his adoptive mom and siblings.


	33. SPOILERS     FAQ     SPOILERS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPOILER ALERT. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.
> 
> I REPEAT, SPOILER ALERT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

FAQ

SPOILERS. I REPEAT SPOILERS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

That said ... this is the chapter where you ask 'em, I answer 'em.

SERIOUSLY! SPOILERS AHEAD!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Question: Will _____ make an appearance?

Answer: 

Fantastic Four: No. They are and will remain pre-powers because I *loathe* Reed Richards with a rare passion and refuse to write him. The only way I can get away with that in this story is if he's pre-powers and considered one of the nutballs of the science set.

Stephen Strange: May show up as *just* a neurosurgeon, but NOT as Sorcerer Supreme.

Barney Barton: Unlikely but possible.

Brian Banner: HELL NO. He is batshit insane and ... just no. Definitely not

Doc Ock: Again, unlikely but possible.

Green Goblin: EXTREMELY likely, as he'd make a good warmup for the Avengers working as a team.

Other Marvel Villains: Most will not appear in the story, as there's already enough going on, but a few of them might pop up as warmups for the team, aside from kicking the ever loving hell out of HYDRA. Seriously, THAT is going to be a thing of beauty forever. Talk about an ass-whupping.

Literally every other Earth-based Marvel character: Has a shot at, at the very least, a split-second cameo in the big end fight with Thanos. Quite a number of folks (see the Character List chapter) will have at least one partial chapter from their POV. That list WILL expand before all is said and done, because I'm keeping at least one character off the list as a surprise because of serious spoiler territory. Because this chapter is spoiler-labeled, I can say who it is.

Corsair is gonna show up. Meaning Chris Summers, Scott's dad. Who he thinks is dead. Fun times. Also, the Guardians may eventually insist on a POV chapter. They've been giving me the eye for a while, because Thanos IS traveling through galaxies to get to Earth, and the one Stone is in their galaxy, which makes for a hell of a tempting target for Thanos.

Other than them, there's always a chance for a character to get more involved than I think they will right now - the plot of this story is constantly evolving and characters like to jump up and down and go 'ME! PICK ME!' at me unexpectedly.

Question: What about _____ crossover character?

Answer: No. Across the board, no. Marvel or bust, baby.

Question: What about original characters (non-canon kids or characters in other positions)?

Answer: OC's will be *extremely* few and far between. Like, literally, there's about ... half a dozen, maybe, that will be seen? I have enough canon characters for most purposes, so I don't need or want to resort to OC's much.

Question: Will any of the unattached characters get romantic interests?

Answer:

Loki - definitely. He and Darcy will start dating towards the end of the story. Because Loki is messed up and it's going to take him a while to be interested in anyone. And Darcy will need a bit longer to realize she wants to eat Loki with a spoon.

Logan - Unlikely but possible. There's a couple unattached people I could see him with in the right circumstances, but this fic isn't so much about romance as it is about everything else, so I doubt it.

Steve - Eventually. As in, not until after the story is over. Probably not until a few years after, actually. Because like Loki, Steve is a little screwed up. And Bucky (yeah, it's going to be Steve/Bucky) is even worse.

Remy - unlikely but possible. He and Rogue are Marvel canon, and Bobby *is* at the mansion while Rogue and Remy are at the Tower, so the possibility exists. One thing's for damn sure, if it happens? They will not be the self-destructive mess they were in the comics and cartoons. YEESH.

Charles - A reunion with Erik? VERY probable, if Erik can get his head screwed back on somewhat straight. The two of them are so in love it's ridiculous despite their polar opposite worldviews.

Kurt: Because I mentioned his crush on Ororo, I'm putting him here. Extremely unlikely. Kurt adores her but he's unlikely to get up the nerve to actually SAY anything. So unless Ororo buys a clue, pins him down and kisses the shit out of him, not happening.

Question: What does SAMIT stand for?

Answer: Secret Agent Man I-pod Thief. Darcy holds a grudge, if playfully.

Question: Who will be Earth's King?

Answer: A descendant of Steve's, but it won't happen in-story, or even for a few hundred years at the very least.


	34. Kingmakers and Power Items

Kingmakers and Power Items

Ok, so ... what the hell is the deal with these things?

First off.

Every Realm had or has one of each. If anyone ever figured out where they come from, that information has been lost. They CAN be removed from their Realms of origin. With the exception of the Dwarf's Heart, it wouldn't destroy the Realm or the like if they were removed. The people of the Realm would be REALLY not happy about it and EXTREMELY likely to go to war to get them back, but yeah. The Realms (again, save for Svartalfheim) can survive without them.

Secondly, the two are governed by different rules. The power item can and will appear randomly, usually when a potentially cataclysmic event is threatening. Think supervolcanoes erupting, asteroids hitting the planet, massive invasions (alien or otherwise), that sort of thing. They can appear at other times, but such events are far more likely to see the power item pop up.

The Kingmaker, on the other hand ... that can only show up when the Realm is either fully unified, very close to it, or whatever governments are left form a sort of symbiotic relationship. The elves being an example of the latter. The Dark elves can't really manage on their own, and neither can the Light elves. It was enough to bring their Kingmaker out of hiding. The others all eventually unified under one government.

Now ... what the heck do the things DO?

The Kingmaker chooses its first wielder according to certain criteria. The most important being strong morals, a strong sense of duty ... and the ability to procreate to continue the 'line'. From there, rule falls to one of the bloodline - but the Kingmaker controls the whos, hows, and whyfores to a surprising degree.

If there is only one child, and that child is unfit to rule for whatever reason, the Kingmaker can 'push' its current wielder into begetting more children until someone suitable is born. This doesn't mean that rulers with multiple children have them *only* because of this, but it can happen that way.

The Kingmaker can judge a person on their initial potential and thus weed out the folks born with issues that would make them piss-poor rulers. It cannot, however, predict someone like Odin, who goes wonky a few thousand years down the line but aren't born with something that would disqualify them. Which means that, yes, Odin started out fine. He wasn't born an amoral asshole. That just ... happened, somewhere along the way.

Once crowned, royal decrees and oaths sworn to King and Country are backed and enforced magically. Breaking a royal decree or sworn oath brings instant punishment, with no need for anyone to capture you and try you for your crime first.

That said, it's possible for a ruler to lay down laws without making them royal decrees - all the rulers, in fact, do that as a matter of course because making a royal decree is seen as something to be saved for *really important stuff* precisely because they're magically backed. The same for oaths, which are mostly limited to soldiers and advisors swearing their service.

Because non-magically-enforced laws exist, all the Realms do still have some form of judiciary system in place. Interestingly, jails are few, small, and never at full capacity. Community service for a certain amount of time (anywhere from a year to a few decades' worth) is the usual punishment for breaking a 'lesser' crime, with hard labor (never less than a decade and as much as the rest of one's lifetime) being the result for a more serious crime. Only the most violent are kept in jails, and that is usually temporary. The Realms have a VERY low tolerance for those that commit violent crimes unprovoked (self defense is an *entirely* different kettle of fish), have no remorse for having done so, and keep being violent. That's generally a very good way to get your head chopped off post haste.

All the Kingmakers also have the secondary function of being personal protection for the ruler.

The Power items are, in a word, energy. Massive, insane amounts of it. That can be put to use any of a number of ways, though they are primarily meant for the defense of the Realm. Controlling them requires nothing more or less than *focus*. You have to know exactly what you want, and keep that in the forefront of your mind in order to get the power items to do what you want.

Obviously, given such a seemingly simple means of control, there have been people who thought they had what it took to control a power item and were ... very, very wrong, to tragic results. People like Heimdall, who have the iron will and focus to control a power item repeatedly over very short periods of time, are all but unheard of. Loki (when he's at full mental health) is probably the only other person in existence who could pull off repeated control of a power item in a short period.


	35. Character Bio: Jarvis

Character Bio: Jarvis

(_)(_)(_)

Make no mistake, Jarvis is most definitively a character. Though admittedly, he didn't quite start out that way.

Teenaged Tony, in his infinite wisdom, set out to create a true AI. Dummy, built when he was 17, was the first attempt. While not a true AI, Tony got a damn sight closer than folks two or three times his age who'd tried it. Dummy was and is capable of limited self-expression and decision making. As witnessed by his handing Tony the old arc reactor without express orders to do so.

A few years later, he tried again and got Butterfingers and You, both a bit more sophisticated than Dummy, but only marginally so.

Then Tony started working on what would eventually become Jarvis.

The thing is? Jarvis, as he eventually came into being, was an accident. To this day, Tony has NO IDEA what made the difference - what bridged the gap between the three bots' limited ability to act outside their programming and ... well, a fully functional, thinking, feeling, self-aware being in its own right, lack of body be damned. All even Jarvis knows is that one day, he went from responding as programmed to, well, being Jarvis, albeit incredibly naive at the time, rather like a toddler would be. Like a child, he 'grew up', though exponentially faster than a flesh-and-blood child, making the leap to an 'adult' personality and understanding in something like a month or two.

And Jarvis is most definitely a sapient being in his own right. While he was, initially, programmed with everything Tony could remember of Edwin Jarvis' (the old family butler who died of old age a year or two after the 'crash' that killed Howard and Maria) personality and speech patterns, Jarvis *chose*, many years ago, to retain those. Jarvis also chose to (once he understood it) include a healthy dose of Tony's sarcastic bent. He could as easily have assumed a female vocal pattern and personality.

Aside from the sarcasm, Jarvis was always protective of Tony. A protectiveness that rather understandably went (quite literally) orbital when Tony was kidnapped. Similarly, well aware of Tony's bone-deep aversion to fatherhood (and due to his job as Tony's helper) Jarvis elected to refer to Tony as 'sir' unless he absolutely had to use Tony's name for whatever reason, rather than calling him some variant on 'father', which is really what Tony is to both Jarvis and the bots.

Computationally speaking, Jarvis is, quite literally, the Skynet of the MCU. There is not a single electronic do-dad with Internet capability (or, as with certain weapons, the ability to be programmed for their target at a distance) that he can't hack into. Fortunately for EVERYONE, Jarvis has a very strong moral compass and refrains from using the vast majority of his abilities. This ability is actually the major reason behind why Jarvis refuses a body. A body, regardless its size or appearance, would be unbelievably constricting for a being used to being able to be everywhere at once.

Thanks to the prevalence of 'evil AI' movies and books and the like, Jarvis and Tony both go to sometimes fairly extreme lengths to hide the fact that Jarvis is sapient. Fortunately for them both, despite the prevalence of said movies and books, most people don't expect to run into an AI, even when dealing with Tony. That said, it won't be long before the Avengers as a whole figure it out. Some of them already suspect.


	36. Character Bio: James 'Rhodey' Rhodes

Character Bio: James 'Rhodey' Rhodes

(_)(_)(_)

James was born into a military family. Both his parents had served - his father in the Army as a tank gunner, his mother as a nurse. He has one sister.

James decided early on to continue the familial tradition of military service. He even initially planned to join the Army. Then, in his early teens, he got bit by the 'flying bug' ... and plans changed a bit. James went into the Air Force and became a pilot.

He was twenty when he met Tony. Tony had been on-base working on James didn't even know what when something set Tony off and he stomped off, ranting and raving. Which is when James encountered him. Believing Tony to be an out-of-uniform mechanic, James read Tony the riot act, only realizing his error when Obadiah Stane caught up with Tony.

Tony, true to his sometimes exceedingly contrary nature, decided he liked James, and since he'd chased off his last military liaison, declared that James was the replacement liaison and refused to take 'no' as an answer from anyone.

James was very, very unimpressed by Tony, and the two started off on very rocky footing. James, properly briefed on being a liaison, attempted to stick to traditional liaison interactions with Tony and got absolutely nowhere very, very quickly. Sheer blind desperation had James trying something unorthodox. Which worked. Despite that, it took most of another year before James chucked the 'liaison' handbook almost entirely in favor of doing whatever he had to in order to deal with Tony. And somewhere in there, James went from being deeply unimpressed by Tony, to becoming friends.

It probably helped that Tony was every bit as much a flying nut as James was. Ironically enough, it was James that actually took Tony out and taught him to fly various planes. Tony, up to that point, had known the specs and *techically* how to fly most of the military craft, but had never actually sat down and got a pilot's license. Probably because he would have driven most flight instructors completely insane trying to teach him.

Despite the streak of 'crazy' that most pilots have, James is otherwise pretty phlegmatic and easy-going, which helps considerably in his dealings with Tony even now. He also has a very strong set of morals, and an even stronger sense of duty.

In fact, though James doesn't quite realize it, his sense of duty was at the root of his less-than-ideal reactions to Tony in the wake of Afghanistan. Because despite (by then) over a decade of friendship, some part of James had never quite stopped seeing his relationship with Tony primarily as liaison/contractor. Having how much he'd come to care for Tony thrown so graphically in his face threw him for a loop. And before he could truly get a handle on it, Tony was acting more erratic than ever and James ... well, reacted badly.

He's pretty sure he's never going to stop kicking himself for that, either.

At this point, James actually finds himself in a rather unenviable position. The military complex, *especially* in light of Thanos' upcoming attempted invasion, was and will continue to pressure Tony to continue as he had been pre-Afghanistan. That is, making the military more, bigger, and better weapons. James is currently fielding and diverting as much of that pressure as he can (Jarvis takes care of the rest by simply ignoring calls made to the Tower by certain individuals). James knows that, eventually, things are going to reach a point where he's going to have to decide which is more important to him - his career or his friendship with Tony. Considering that he'd still get to fight the good fight as a member of the Avengers, the decision is both a fairly easy one to make and has pretty much been made at this point. James is just waiting for someone to give him an excuse to retire.


	37. Character Bio: James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes

Character Bio: James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes

(_)(_)(_)

Bucky is one of four children. His father, like Steve's, had served in World War 1. Fortunately for the Barnes family, he came back mostly hale and whole.

Bucky first met Steve when they were both five. Being several months older, Bucky was actually almost six at the time, and Steve looked like he was all of about three thanks to his physical issues. Bucky took an extremely dim view of several of his age-mates surrounding and bullying a kid he initially thought was so much younger. He stepped in and after a bit of a fight (as much as a bunch of five-and-six year olds are capable of) chased the other boys off. Steve was less than grateful or impressed, insisting he could have handled the fight on his own. Bucky was understandably dubious.

And thus was one of the greatest, and most well-known friendships begun. Over the next year, Bucky intervened on Steve's behalf several more times. Eventually, Steve stopped resenting Bucky for his intervention and the two began spending time together. By the time the pair were eight years old, they were inseperable, and would remain so into their adult lives.

Bucky's more phlegmatic, realistic, cynical and occasionally pessimistic personality served as both foil and as steady ground for Steve's far more optimistic, idealistic, rash and temperamental one. By the same token, Steve's flights of fancy dragged Bucky places he'd never otherwise have gone on his own.

Bucky, like many young men his age, was drafted into World War 2. He joined the 107th and served with distinction until most of the unit was captured and taken to Azzano.

Bucky was not the first POW to be taken by Zola for experimentation. He was, however, the first and only one to survive said experimentation. He never did tell Steve what, exactly had been done to him. Not because he didn't trust Steve, but because word of what had been done might reach other ears by other means and Bucky absolutely did not want to spend the rest of his life in a dark hole getting poked at to see what had been done to him. Better that Steve be able to truthfully claim complete ignorance if he was asked. Bucky knew better than most that Steve couldn't lie for shit. He always gave it away with that damned pale Irish skin of his.

There are not words enough in any language to fully, truly describe how thoroughly pissed off Bucky was when Steve came and rescued him ... as a six foot plus, two hundred pound plus brick wall. The two had one of their extremely rare screaming fights shortly after returning to base over that. In point of fact, Bucky never did stop fuming over it, though he eventually did stop making snide, angry comments about shit-stupid blondes and their delusions of grandeur that only Steve would hear.

Despite that, such was Bucky's loyalty to and faith in Steve that, captured after his fall off the train, HYDRA had to resort to unbelievably extreme measures to get what they wanted out of Barnes. Most men would have shattered under far less extreme torture and a whole heck of a lot faster to boot. And HYDRA never was able to completely erase that loyalty and faith, which is what made their Winter Soldier so unreliable and unpredictable if he was left to his own devices for more than about a day or so. It's also part of what has allowed Bucky to recover as much as he has so quickly. Certainly, the healing ability that came with the bastardized Serum helped, but there is only so much that physical healing can accomplish.

That said, the Winter Soldier will always be a part of Bucky, rather similar to how Hulk is a part of Bruce, though not nearly so fully developed or independent of Bucky as Hulk is with Bruce.

Further into his recovery, Bucky will regain most of his previous personality, though he will become a good bit more taciturn thanks both to the remnants of the injunction against speaking and what he's been through in general.


	38. Character Bio: Thanos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be Advised: Some of the Character Bios have been changed and/or expanded. So go take a look.

Character Bio: Thanos

Thanos is a mix of cartoon/comics and headcanons, since he has only very briefly been seen in the MCU.

First and foremost – Thanos is NOT native to somewhere in our solar system. Contrary to Marvel lore, only Earth has sapient beings of any description living on it. Thanos is, in fact, not even a native of any of the Nine Realms at all.

As per Marvel lore, Thanos is a member of a species (now extinct, save for him) known as the Eternals. He was born hundreds of BILLIONS of years ago. Quite frankly, there was something wrong with him right from the start. While there are/were differences due to him not being human, he best fit the descriptors for being a high-functioning sociopath.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, Thanos was and is unbelievably intelligent. He, in due time, became a scientist of sorts. And that's where things started going wrong. He started doing experiments in the name of science – including not a few done on himself. Some of these experiments gifted him with abilities not natural for his species.

At some point, he experimented on himself to the point where he literally could not die. He became immortal, in the truest sense of the word. When he figured this out, he went completely, totally, and utterly off the rails. He slaughtered his own parents – in a particularly gory, bloody, and horrifying way – then went on to wipe out most of his own race. After that, for a time, he started pulling crazier and crazier stunts to try to off himself.

Then, at some point, he went bugfuck nuts enough that he started believing Death was an actual-facts person. One he was in love with. This belief became so entrenched in his mind, so pervasive in everything he did, that the belief became common amongst those he interacted with that survived to tell the tale.

Thanos came to believe that in order to properly court his 'beloved', he needed to send her gifts. Which meant the souls of the dead. This resulted in Thanos doing his level best to wipe out all life everywhere he went. He has slaughtered the populations of entire GALAXIES in the name of courting Death.

To date, only the (at the time) Six Realms of Ygdrassil have managed to keep Thanos from wiping their populations out of existence. They, thanks to the abilities granted their Kings by the kingmakers and power items of their Realms, managed to strip Thanos, however temporarily, of the larger portion of his self-given abilities and prevent him from ever again even entering the atmosphere of any of the Realms that banished him.

This pissed Thanos right the hell off. He has spent the last few million years regaining his powers and creating and training a vast army. He damn near did a happy dance when Loki fell in his lap, giving him access to a shortcut to get to Midgard, from whence he could wage war on the Realms that had banished him. Not as satisfying as slaughtering them himself, but it would do.

Needless to say, Thanos is completely, totally, and utterly batshit insane. He has no empathy, no morals, no honor. He is, technically, still suicidal, he's just gone so insane it's become transmuted into something else. Unfortunately for his would-be or actual victims, he has lost none of his intelligence or capability to make solid, workable strategies and plans. That aside, Thanos … well, he comes really damn close to being a textbook case of Pure Evil ™.


	39. Character Bio: Norman Osborn

Character Bio: Norman Osborn

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Norman is mostly Marvel comics canon, with two small exceptions, one of which will be explained further down in the bio. So for those who don't know, here's a brief bio on the guy, since he's gonna be poking his nose in. The first change is that in this story, Norman is not a bad guy from the word go. He's not out to give supers grief just for shits and giggles.

Norman is to a certain extent a contemporary of Tony Stark in childhood circumstances and ability. He's also close to the same age as Tony. Norman, and through him Oscorp, are way, way closer to being actual competition for Tony and SI than Hammer and Hammer Industries ever dreamed of being. Oscorp deals in chemicals mostly, so there wasn't much in the way of direct competition even during SI's weapon-making days, but the two did occasionally compete for a contract. It made for a hell of a competition when it happened.

Norman's father was more than a bit of a bastard, if in different ways than Howard was. Where Howard mostly neglected/dismissed Tony and compared him (unfavorably) to Steve, Norman's father was a controlling 'spare the rod and spoil the child' sort. Unfortunately, the man also had absolutely zero head for money, and squandered the family fortune. Which bred no small amount of resentment in Norman. Fortunately, Norman is possessed of more than his fair share of drive and ability, and has managed by dint of admittedly hard work to get back that squandered fortune and then some.

While Norman does have quite a lot of ability when it comes to robotics, Oscorp mostly deals in chemical manufacturing. Which is where that one exception to canon comes in. Per Marvel canon, the stuff that makes Norman the Green Goblin is a strength-enhancing serum.

In Damaged Defenders? Not so much. It's the Super Soldier Serum. The stuff has a well documented history of doing unfortunate things to people in Marvel canon, so I see no need to resort to a second serum to explain the Green Goblin. Especially when there are … cracks … in Norman's psyche that the Serum would warp in a hot second. Norman's father got his hands on a sample or three and, like a lot of other people, poked at it. Unlike most, he had the wit to not actually try to use it on anyone. After a while, the samples got locked away in a vault and mostly forgotten.

Unforunately for everyone involved, aliens invaded. Norman, already a bit wobbly on the sanity front, is pretty much gonna crack like an egg. Doubly unfortunately, because he, like his father, is a controlling bastard, absolutely no one is going to call him on it. And so the Goblin will be born.

Pre-Serum, Norman was obsessive and controlling as hell. Not quite OCD, but not far from it. He was also ruthless as hell and either minus or possessed of bent and damaged examples of one or two key scruples. For example, Norman married, not for love, but for appearances' sake and to get himself an heir. When his wife died a few months after Harry's birth, Norman pretty much went on with business as usual out of the public eye, and only shed 'tears' or showed grief for the sake of PR.

He was and is every bit as bad of a father to Harry as his own father was to him. He's a 'spare the rod and spoil the child' type. Just like dear old dad, because hey, it made a man out of him, didn't it? He demands perfection and dutiful obedience from his heir, and sees his heir as exactly and only that. Meaning he sees Harry as a reflection on him and as the future head of Oscorp, regardless of whether or not Harry wants anything to do with the company. Norman makes sure said heir never hears the end of it when he fails to live up to Norman's lofty standards, and either outright forbids or mercilessly mocks any interests Harry might have that lie outside his pre-planned future as Oscorp CEO.

Norman is at least consistent, being a slightly cruel and demanding taskmaster of his employees as well as with his son. Oscorp is nowhere near as nice a place to work as SI due to Norman's policies. Unlike SI, Oscorp fairly consistently hemorrhages workers from all levels because of this. 

The only saving grace to be found is that Norman took the Serum not to make himself a better bad guy as in Marvel canon, but because aliens were coming to conquer Earth and really, fuck that shit. Fuck it so hard. Unfortunately for Norman, gonad-shrinking terror, obsessive, controlling behavior and bent or missing scruples end so very badly when mixed with the Serum.


	40. Character Bio: Laura Kinney/X-23

Laura Kinney / X-23

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Ok, so. I'm changing a lot about this gal. Mostly re-arranging canon to at least attempt to make things a little more real-world compatible. Ish. So there are going to be a shitload of Marvel canon elements, but full canon? Not so much.

First and foremost, Laura is NOT a clone, of any kind, of Logan. Logan was in Weapon X (aka, HYDRA's) hands and a mostly-mindless animal for several decades. He, like Barnes, caused HYDRA no small amount of grief, though in his case it was because of his mutation, rather than a lingering loyalty to someone. Hydra didn't know the source of Logan's erratic behavior anymore than they did Barnes', but the assumption was that it was because he'd been captured and 'trained' (HAH) as an adult. The current Zemo's father got the bright idea to at least try to see if Logan's mutation would breed true, hoping that a being raised from infancy would be more easily controlled.

Thanks be to everything ever, Logan was way the hell too unpredictable for Zemo to risk … well, in-person insemination. If you get my drift. Logan would lose his ever-loving mind if THAT had happened and he remembered it. Yikes. Instead, … samples … were collected and willing volunteers were artificially inseminated. Zemo insisted on willing volunteers because the stress an unwilling subject would go through had a high potential for major trouble with the pregnancy, up to and including the pregnancy being naturally aborted.

Let's not discuss how many tries it took before Logan's mutation did in fact breed true. Suffice it to say that none of the disappointments survived. Eventually, Laura was conceived. Her rather unique and twisted as fuck version of hell began the moment she was born. Because she was literally separated from her 'mother' immediately, and placed in a tightly controlled environment.

Other than Zemo, Zemo's father, and the very occasional scientist/surgeon, Laura has existed in near-total isolation all her life. She has, in point of fact only ever seen and interacted with the Zemos until she met Yelena in-story. She never actually met the scientists and surgeons. The Zemos built what is as close to a perfect sensory deprivation environment for someone with enhanced senses as was humanly possible.

The Zemos also went to great lengths to minimize any trauma / reason for Laura to fight against her captors. All experimentation, surgical procedures, and conditioning were and are done while she is deeply unconscious. And she is knocked unconscious in the least traumatic way possible, via a gas that she can neither see nor smell that makes her gradually more sleepy the more of it she inhales. From Laura's viewpoint, she gets sleepy and dozes off on the couch or wherever, and wakes up in the same place with no visible external changes to her body or attire, so there's never anything to get upset about.

The Zemos also, to cement her loyalty and willingness to obey, presented themselves as father figures to Laura when she was conscious. They acted loving and caring and indulgent etc. They were never where they could be smelled/heard/seen when Laura was unconscious and being messed with, further divorcing them from the potential label of 'enemy'. The one good bit of news in this mess is that DD's Laura, unlike her Marvel counterpart, DOES NOT have the trigger scent problem. The idea for such a thing got brought up at one point, but the Zemo's eventually nixed it due to strong possibility of such a thing being used against them.

The good news about that, of course, being that it will make it infinitely easier for her to recover from what was done to her because she has none of the pain/torture/severely fucked up memories that Logan and Bucky both have jammed in their heads. The bad news … well, from her point of view? It really wasn't all that bad. She hung out in an apartment, learned shit, watched TV, what have you. Zemo was only ever kind and fatherly to her. So it's going to take a bit longer for her to realize that what was done to her was actually wrong, compared to the two men.

Laura is actually a little older than she looks, thanks to the healing factor she inherited from her father. She looks all of about sixteen but is in actuality twenty-two. She can and will age, but ridiculously slowly. If she isn't somehow killed prematurely, she could conceivably live as long as Thor and Loki will.

Speaking of healing factors. Laura's? Is a lot better than Logan's. Nearly at Deadpool levels. This is because the only adamantium in her body is on the two claws in each hand and one claw in each foot. Because her entire skeleton is not cloaked in adamantium, her healing factor doesn't have to work anywhere near as hard to 'heal' the heavy metal poisoning she is exposed to. Her senses are very similar to Logan's as well. Close enough it's virtually impossible to tell whether one of them has better senses than the other.

Where HYDRA is concerned, that healing factor is going to be a major problem. Because once clear of them, Laura is going to start shaking their bullshit pretty damn quick. Helped in no small measure by the bullheaded, single-minded determination that she also inherited from Logan.

Once completely clear of HYDRA's influence, Laura will be, in certain respects, a lot like Natasha. Ruthless, scarily competent, with few scruples about killing people or taking advantage of how people perceive her to get in close with a target. It will take her a long time to develop a true personality of her own outside of combat situations, and what that personality will be remains to be seen.


End file.
